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By the same Author: 

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW; 

OR, 

MORALITY AND RELIGION IN THEIR RELATION TO LIFE. 

SECOND EDITION. 



FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston. 



THE 



^ 






SECRET OF SWEDENBORG 



BEING AN ELUCIDATION OF HIS DOCTRINE 

OF THE DIVINE NATURAL 

HUMANITY. 



By HENRY JAMES. 




BOSTON: 
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 

SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
1869. 



if 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

HENRY JAMES, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The following essay comprises an article which ap- 
peared in the North American Review for July 1867, 
and a large amount of additional matter. I had not 
space in the Review to do more than enter upon a 
theme previously so unwrought, and I am afraid I have 
done it only scant justice since. The subject is one 
however which invites and will well reward any amount 
of rehandling ; and I cannot, just now at all events, 
afford the time to treat it more exhaustively. I am con- 
tent to have outlined it in so conscientious a manner as 
that any one interested may easily work out the neces- 
sary details for himself; so I leave it for the present. 

While deism as an intellectual tradition continues 
doubtless to survive, it seems at the same time to be 
losing all hold upon the living thought of men, being 
trampled under foot by the advance of a scientific 
naturalism. Paganism and science are indeed plainly 
incompatible terms. The conception of a private or 
unemployed divine force in the world — the concep- 
tion of a deity unimplicated in the nature, the progress, 
and the destiny of man — is utterly repugnant to 
human thought ; and if such a conception were the true 



JV ADVERTISEMENT. 

logical alternative of atheism, science would erelong 
everywhere, as she is now doing in Germany, confess 
herself atheistic. But the true battle-field is not nearly 
so narrow as this. The rational alternative of atheism 
is not deism, but Christianity, and science accordingly 
would be atheistic at a very cheap if not wholly gratui- 
tous rate, should it become so only to avoid the deistic 
hypothesis of creation. The deistic hypothesis then 
is effectually dead and buried for scientific purposes. 
That it is rapidly becoming so even for the needs of the 
religious instinct also, we have a lively augury furnished 
us in the current popularity of two very naive and 
amiable religious books, which unconsciously put a new 
face upon the atheistic controversy by attempting to 
give revelation itself a strictly rational aspect, and so 
bring it within the legitimate domain of science. One 
of these books is named Ecce Homo, the other Ecce 
Deus. They are both of them interesting in them- 
selves, but much more so, I think, as indicating a certain 
progress in religious thought, which tends to the dis- 
owning of any deity out of strictly human proportions, 
out of the proportions of our own nature ; or, what is 
the same thing, tends to disallow all personal and admit 
only a spiritual infinitude, which is the infinitude of 
character. I for my own part rejoice extremely in this 
brightening of our intellectual skies. I hope the day is 
now no longer so distant as once it seemed, when the 
idle, pampered, and mischievous force which men have 
everywhere superstitiously worshipped as divine, and 
sought to placate by all manner of cruel, slavish, and 
mercenary observances, may be utterly effaced in the 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



resurrection lineaments of that spotless unfriended 
youth, who in the world's darkest hour allied his own 
godward hopes with the fortunes only of the most de- 
filed, the most diseased, the most disowned of human 
kind, and so for the first and only time on earth 
avouched a breadth in the meanest human bosom 
every way fit to house and domesticate the infinite 
divine love. Long before Christ, the lover had freely 
bled for his mistress, the friend for his friend, the parent 
for his child, the patriot for his country. History 
shows no record however of any but him steadfastly 
choosing death at the hands of fanatical self-seeking 
men, lest oy simply consenting to live he should become 
the object of their filthy and fulsome devotion. In 
other words, many a man had previously illustrated the 
creative benignity in every form of passionate self-sur- 
render and self-sacrifice. He alone, in the teeth of every 
passionate impulse known to the human heart — that 
is to say, in sheer despite of every tie of familiarity, of 
friendship, of country, of religion, that ordinarily makes 
life sweet and sacred — surrendered himself to death 
in clear, unforced, spontaneous homage to universal 
love. 

But then it must be frankly admitted on the other 
hand that a certain adverse omen declares itself in the 
religious arena; not however among the positive or 
doctrinal orthodox sort, so much as among those of a 
negative or sentimental unitarian hue. It is fast grow- 
ing a fashion, for example, among our so-called " radi- 
cal " religious contemporaries, vehemently to patronize 
Christ's humanity, by way of more effectually discoun- 



yj ADVERTISEMENT. 

tenancing his conventional divine repute. I too dis- 
like the altogether musty and incoherent divinity as- 
cribed to Christ by the church — a divinity which is 
intensely accidental and no way incidental to his ineffa- 
bly tempted, suffering, and yet victorious spiritual man- 
hood. But it is notoriously bad policy to confirm 
one's self in a mere negative attitude of mind, especially 
on questions of such intellectual pith and moment as 
this, and I therefore caution the movers of the new cru- 
sade to bethink themselves in time, whether, after all, 
the only divinity which is capable of permanent recog- 
nition at men's hands must not necessarily wear their 
own form ? I find myself incapable, for my own part, of 
honoring the pretension of any deity to my allegiance, 
who insists upon standing eternally aloof from my own 
nature, and by that fact confesses himself personally 
incommensurate and unsympathetic with my basest, 
most sensuous, and controlling personal necessities. It 
is an easy enough thing to find a holiday God who is 
all too selfish to be touched with the infirmities of his 
own creatures — a God, for example, who has naught to 
do but receive assiduous court for a work of creation 
done myriads of ages ago, and which is reputed to have 
cost him in the doing neither pains nor patience, 
neither affection nor thought, but simply the utterance 
of a dramatic word ; and who is willing, accordingly, to 
accept our decorous Sunday homage in ample quit- 
tance of obligations so unconsciously incurred on our 
part, so lightly rendered and so penuriously sanctioned 
on his. Every sect, every nation, every family almost, 
offers some pet idol of this description to your worship. 



AD VER TI8EMENT. 



Vll 



But I am free to confess that I have long outgrown this 
loutish conception of deity. I can no longer bring my- 
self to adore a characteristic activity in the God of my 
worship, which falls below the secular average of human 
character. In fact, what I crave with all my heart 
and understanding — what my very flesh and bones 
cry out for — is no longer a Sunday but a week-day 
divinity, a working God, grimy with the dust and 
sweat of our most carnal appetites and passions, and 
bent, not for an instant upon inflating our worthless 
pietistic righteousness, but upon the patient, toilsome, 
thorough cleansing of our physical and moral exist- 
ence from the odious defilement it has contracted, 
until we each and all present at last in body and mind 
the deathless efiigy of his own uncreated loveliness. 
And no clear revelation do I get of such a God outside 
the personality of Jesus Christ. It would be gross affec- 
tation then in me at least to doubt that he, whom all 
men in the exact measure of their own veracious man- 
hood acknowledge and adore as supreme among men, 
will always continue to smile at the simulated homage 
— at the purely voluntary or calculated deference — 
which is paid to any unknown or unrevealed and 
transcendental deus, who is yet too superb to subside 
into the dimensions of his sacred human worth. 

Cambridge, Mass., January, 1869. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION. 

Creation the fundamental problem of philosophy. — Difficulties of the 
problem. — Kant's attempt to reconcile them. — A supernatural creation, 
that is, a creation which does not conform to the order and methods of 
nature, inconceivable. — The moral hypothesis of creation untenable. — 
Morality not a creative end, but only a creative means. — Swedenborg and 
Hegel contrasted. — Swedenborg's analysis of consciousness, establisning 
the superiority of its objective to its subjective element, and giving the 
key to the philosophy of creation, in his doctrine of the lord, or maximus 
homo. 1-11 

CHAPTER I. 

Swedenborg's private history and intellectual character. — His biography, 
by William White. — His doctrine of the lord, or divine natural human- 
ity, briefly stated 11-15 

CHAPTER II. 

Creation, according to Swedenborg, is a composite, not a simple, move- 
ment, being bound to provide the creature with subjective or conscious 
existence no less than objective or unconscious being. — The truth of 
creation wholly contingent upon the truth of the creature's identity. — Our 
subjective existence, or constitutional identity, just as indispensable to our 
objective individuality, or the being we have in God, as the marble is to 
the statue, or the mother to the child. — Creation is practically a forma- 
tive or redemptive process, exhibiting such a sheer immersion and obscur- 
ation of creative substance in created form as will insure the eventual 
transfiguration of that form with all divine perfection. How shall creation 
ever be seen to justify this pretension 1 — Here it is that what Swedenborg 
calls the opening of his spiritual sight, and his consequent discovery of the 
internal sense of the Scriptures, makes itself available. — The literal sense 
of Scripture alone is doctrinal. — The spiritual sense is not another literal 
or doctrinal, but a living or spiritual sense, having no relation to time, 
space, or person, and incapable, therefore, of being learned by rote, or 
being ritually administered 15-19 

CHAPTER III. 

It is, therefore, idle to conceive of the new or living church as a new 
ecclesiasticism, in antagonism with those already existing. — The new 



X CONTEXTS. 

church is hased upon the truth of the divine natural humanity, and 
hence has no recognition of a deity outside of the conditions of human 
nature. — The incarnation is a domestication of the divine perfection in 
human nature, and through that in animal, vegetable, and mineral. — 
Swedenborg illustrates this truth rather than argues it. — Distinction 
between living and dead truth, or truths of conscience which belong to 
the life, and truths of science which belong to the memory. — Sweden- 
borg's doctrine of nature — Nature exists only to sense, and has no 
rational reality. — Thus it is a purely phenomenal or apparitional world, 
although in the infancy of our intelligence we suppose it to be the only 
reality, and are incapable of lifting our thought above it. — We suppose 
creation accordingly to be a physical achievement of God, — a magical ex- 
hibition of his power in space and time, whereas it is a wholly spiritual 
operation in the sphere of human affection and thought. — Philosophy de- 
mands consequently that we allow nature only a subjective force, or re- 
gard it as strict involution of the human mind. . . . 20-25 

CHAPTER IV. 

The same subject continued and illustrated. — Swedenborg's vindication of 
nature and the part it plays in creation. — The divine love and wisdom can- 
not but be and exist in other beings or existences created from itself; and 
nature is the logical background of such existences, as giving them self- 
consciousness. — Remarkable definition of love. — Consists in one's wil- 
ling what is one's own to be another's, and feeling another's delight as 
one's own. — Other quotations from Swedenborg. — If love be of this 
essentially unselfish quality, the creative love must be infinitely pure; 
binding the creator to make himself over without stint to the creature, or 
to allow the latter to effloresce in all his native selfishness and worldliness, 
to the utmost limit compatible with his eventual spiritual reaction towards 
the creator. — Creation is the practical immersion consequently of crea- 
tive perfection in created imperfection, so that the more the creator alone 
is, the more the creature alone appears. Hence the origin of nature. It 
expresses the obligation the creature is under to appropriate the creator, 
or to make him his own. It is the nuptial couch of creator and creature ; 
the marriage ring that consecrates the espousals of infinite and finite. 
Thus its virtue is purely ceremonial, shadowy, reflective, as giving the 
creature — not being — but self-consciousness, or such an appearance of 
being as may eventually induct him into the acquaintance of being 
itself. 25-31 

CHAPTER V. 

A closer exposition of Swedenborg's doctrine of creation. — The law of 
the creature's subjective constitution. — Nature the realm neither of being 
nor of not being, but of existence, and hence the tertium quid of which 
philosophy has always been in search to reconcile God and man. It is 
not the spiritual creation itself, but the shadow of it projected upon a 
finite intelligence. — Our intelligence conditioned upon nature. — Swe- 
denborg makes nature a theatre of revelation exclusively, and denies it any 
other worth. 31-37 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Swedenborg not properly chargeable with pantheistic or idealist tendencies ; 
being separated from them by his doctrine of creation, which makes nature 
no being but only a seeming, no substance but only a shadow. 38-40 

CHAPTER VII. 

The nature of selfhood or proprium. — What is meant by man being said to 
be created male and female. — What it is to be an image of God. — It is 
to be an inverse or negative representation of the divine perfection. 40 - 47 

CHAPTER VIII. 

■ Creator and creature subjectively opposed, the one possessing all fulness in 
himself, the other being destitute of everything. — To give natural form 
or selfhood to the creature is to vivify the infinite void he is in himself, or 
render him conscious of it. — Our natural creation, then, without our sub- 
sequent spiritual redemption, would be a great blemish upon the divine 
name. — The male and female man, the homo and the vir, constitute the 
machinery of that redemption, — the one representing the universal or 
created element, the other the individual or creative one, and their mar- 
riage constituting human society or fellowship, in which the redemption of 
our nature is complete. — The mistakes of philosophy in this direction. 
— The angel would gladly be without selfhood if he could. . . 47-51 

CHAPTER IX. 

Why the creative love wears of necessity an aspect of crucifixion to our regard. 
Because we, being created existences, are forms of self-love, and self-love 
can only recognize pure love under a form of opposition to itself, that is, 
when it appears to deny self, instead of favor it. — Nature a descending 
life of God in man, history an ascending one. They are both alike 
mere portals of the spiritual world, nature reflecting to our spiritual or 
cultivated intelligence that inward absorption of infinite in finite which is 
necessary to the finite becoming outwardly clad with infinite lustre. 
Hence the antagonism in human nature of the public and private life, the 
reconciliation of these things constituting our redemption, or social 
destiny. 51-57 

CHAPTER X. 

History resolves itself into the existence of the church on earth, which means 
a divine purgation of human nature. — Self-love and the love of the world 
religiously consecrated ab initio, because out of them as an earth will 
eventually spring the loves of goodness and truth which unite man spirit- 
ually with God. — God never quarrels with his creature for his moral 
defects, but accepts them cordially as the needful purchase of his spiritual 
mercy. — His love or mercy is the salvation of the whole human race 
from spiritual poverty, and he has no quarrel with any but the reputed 
rich or righteous, who claim his mercy to themselves. — Thus heaven and 
hell are conditioned upon a church on earth, which, outwardly professing 



xu CONTENTS. 

to love God and the neighbor, inwardly loves self and the world. — The 
devil is the man in whom ritual religion, or the church-consciousness, is 
at its highest; the angel is the man in whom it is at its lowest. — Does 
Swedenborg report an absolute contrariety between heaven and hell, or a 
contingent one ? Citation of passages from Swedenborg bearing upon 
this topic 57-64 

CHAPTER XI. 

Heaven and hell, as contrasted issues of human destiny, totally unintelligible, 
if nature is regarded as the sphere of being or substance, and not ex- 
clusively as that of appearance or shadow. — Swedenborg utterly rejects 
it as having any ontological bearing, and restricts all its issues, therefore, 
celestial and infernal alike, to a servile revelation of the truth, hitherto 
discredited, or rather unsuspected, of God's natural humanity. — The 
necessity of revelation fundamental to creation. — What does revelation 
mean? Differs from information. — An unrevealed God is practically 
no God. — No direct or immediate knowledge of God practicable to us, 
save upon the basis of a previous mediate one. This truth demonstrated 
from the limitations of knowledge. 64-71 

CHAPTER XII. 

Method of the divine revelation very gradual, beginning with the family, 
and ending with the social, unity of man ; a temporary or provisional 
form of it being supplied by the conventional society called the church. — 
The church, as a visible or ritual economy, has never had any real but 
only a representative worth ; and at the present time is sadly behind "the 
world" in spiritual intelligence. But it has had an inestimable use in keep- 
ing alive men's conscience of unrest towards God, and so preparing the way 
for his consummate achievement in our nature, which is the evolution of 
the social sentiment. — Swedenborg's conception of the technical church. 
Has no quarrel with the persons composing it, but only with its un- 
righteous animus 71-79 

CHAPTER XHI. 

The purely negative office of the church in history illustrated and argued, 

from reason and scripture 79-85 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Nature and history of no account in themselves, or on independent grounds, 
but only as furnishing a theatre for God's revelation of himself in hu- 
manity. — Swedenborg's intellectual advantage here over the ordinary 
religionist and scientific rationalist. 85-90 

CHAPTER XV. 

Philosophy of the religious instinct. — The religious life — where it is not a 
mere ritual luxury — is a sincere effort of the worshipper to reconcile the 
divine holiness to his selfishness and worldliness, and hence is fertile only 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

in anguish of conscience ; because the divine purpose is to exhaust self- 
ishness and worldliness as factors of human nature, by endowing man 
with an exclusively social and aesthetic or productive consciousness. — 
The moral instinct. — Morality the badge of human nature, or what man 
has only in common with others, and not in distinction from them. — Op- 
posed, therefore, to spirituality, because the individual element in it is in 
bondage to the universal element. — Our natural regeneration contingent 
upon the marriage of these two elements, whereby the former becomes 
exalted to the first place, and the latter deposed. — Sifting function of the 
church. — Heaven and hell ; their subjective antagonism, and objective 
harmony, in the divine natural humanity 90-99 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Transition from the ritual to the real church. How effected. Elements of 
the problem. Swedenborg's solution of it. — Utterly irreconcilable 
opposition otherwise between science and faith. — Illustrations. . 100 - 105 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Bearing of Swedenborg's disclosures upon our existing controversies. All 
these controversies proceed upon the tacit assumption of nature's abso- 
luteness, while Swedenborg makes it a strict involution of man. — Man, or 
moral existence, the culmination of nature. — Moral differences between 
men accordingly do not argue any corresponding spiritual differences. — 
Morality distinguishes man from the brute, and identifies him with his 
fellow. — What dignity it confers consequently does not accrue to the 
individual subject of it, but to his nature. — It is intended to base the 
sentiment of fellowship or Mnd-ness among men, and so promote the social 
destiny of the race. — This sentiment of kind-ness unknown to the animal. 
— Our social destiny, or the marriage of the divine and human natures, 
hinges upon the universal element in existence becoming secondary and 
subservient to the individual element. 105-111 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

No miracle possible on Swedenborg's principles, provided miracle involves a vio- 
lation of the laws of nature. — Our ignorance of natural law the only reason 
for that imagination. — Christ's nativity. — The creative law explained 
and enforced. — The visible universe not the true or spiritual creation, but 
only a lively image or correspondence of it to a sensibly organized intel- 
ligence. — Swedenborg's practical attitude towards our existing contro- 
versies. — They, both sides alike, make nature a divine terminus ; Swe- 
denborg makes it a mere starting-point of the creative energy. . 111-120 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Fundamental discrepancy between Messrs. Mansel and Mill, for example, on 
the one hand, and Swedenborg on the other. One party supposes nature 
to be a substantive work of God achieved in space and time, and being, 
therefore, its own raison d'etre ; the other regards it as a mere phenomenal 



XIV CONTENTS. 

manifestation, or correspondence to sense, of a spiritual work of God 
transacting in the realm of mind. — Nature to Swedenborg has no 
ontological significance. — Creation a marriage-tie between creator and 
creature 120-127 

CHAPTER XX. 

Further exposition of Swedenborg's doctrine of nature. — Creation subservient 
to redemption. — The church the symbol of this subserviency. — The 
church utterly unintelligent as to its own nature and offices. Has al- 
ways identified itself with man's selfishness and covetousness, and, by 
obstinately claiming a divine sanction to these things, awakens at length 
a spiritual reaction towards God in the secular bosom, which is tantamount 
to our natural regeneration. 127 - 135 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The homo and the vir. The one unconscious, the other conscious. God 
creates the homo, and begets the vir. — Exposition of consciousness. — 
The vir, or moral man, divinely begotten of the homo, or physical man. — 
The moral world involves the physical, and is evolved by it, as form is 
evolved by substance. — The generic or identical element in all existence 
phenomenal or fallacious, the specific or individual element real. — The 
method of extrication of the vir from the homo 1.35 - 142 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The logical situation out of which the preceding question proceeds. — The 
sphere of God's creative action, strictly speaking, is identical with the 
physical realm. — He creates the homo alone, but he begets the vir. — Adam 
impotent and imbecile until vivified by Eve. — How does the vir or moral 
man become born of the homo or physical man 1 Through the instrumen- 
tality of conscience. — Conscience is the spirit of God in the created 
nature, seeking to become the creature's own spirit. — Exposition of 
conscience 142-157 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Further exposition of conscience. It masks the actual divine presence itself 
in human nature. It is a foe to our moral or infinite righteousness, being 
intended to superinduce a spiritual or infinite one upon us. — The social 
bearings of conscience. It derives all its force from the fact that my 
spiritual relation to God involves, incidentally to itself, my relation to 
my own kind or nature; and this latter relation must be adjusted before 
the former avouches itself satisfied 157-169 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The author's intellectual experience before and after his acquaintance with 
Swedenborg. — Conflict between letter and spirit. — The deistic and 
revealed notion of God. * 170- 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Superiority of the objective to the subjective element in existence. The 
former qualitative, the latter quantitative. Fallacies popularly enter- 
tained on this subject. — Creation inconceivable on any other hypothesis. 
— Creator and creature strictly correlated existences. — Creation impos- 
sible, consequently, unless such a practical equation of the two take place, 
as that the higher nature merge itself in the lower. . . . 180-: 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The sole philosophic function of nature to furnish a logical background or 
basis to the mind in its approaches towards God. — Swedenborg vacates 
the entire ontologic problem by insisting upon the literal veracity of 
creation. — Man alone is by God, and nature is a mere implication of 
man ; a mere shadow or reflection of the infinite and eternal being he 
alone has in God. — Conclusion. — Application of the principles estab- 
lished in the essay to idealism 191 — : 



APPENDIX. 

Notes A to H 207-238 

Postscript 239-243 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 



The fundamental problem of Philosophy is the problem of 
creation. Does our existence really infer a divine and infinite 
being, or does it not ? This question addresses itself to us now 
with special emphasis, inasmuch as speculative minds are begin- 
ning zealously to inquire whether creation can really be admitted 
any longer, save in an accommodated sense of the word ; wheth- 
er men of simple faith have not gone too far in professing to see 
a hand of power in the universe absolutely distinct from the uni- 
verse itself. That being can admit either of increase or diminu- 
tion is philosophically inconceivable, and affronts moreover the 
truth of the creative infinitude. For if God be infinite, as we 
necessarily hold him to be in deference to our own finiteness, 
what shall add to, or take from, the sum of his being ? It is in- 
deed obvious that God cannot create or give being to what has 
being in itself, for this would be contradictory. He can create 
only what is devoid of being in itself : this is manifest. And yet 
what is void of being in itself can at best only appear to be. It 
can be no real, but only a phenomenal existence. Thus the prob- 
lem of creation is seen to engender many speculative doubts. 
How reconcile the antagonism of real and phenomenal, of ab- 
solute and contingent, of which the problem is so full ? By the 
hypothesis of creation, the creature derives all he is from the 
creator. But the creature is essentially not the creator, is above 
all things himself a created being, and therefore the utter and 
exact opposite of the creator. How then shall the infinite crea- 
tor give his finite creature projection, endow him with veritable 
selfhood or identity, and yet experience no compromise of his 
own individuality ? Suffice it to say that what has hitherto called 
itself Philosophy has had so little power fairly to confront these 
difficulties, let alone solve them, as to have set Kant upon the 



2 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOBG. 

notion of placating them afresh by the old recipe of Idealism ; 
that is, by the invention of another or noumenal world, the world 
of " things-in-themselves." No doubt this was a new pusilla- 
nimity on the part of Philosophy, but what better could the phi- 
losopher do ? He saw plainly enough that things were phenom- 
enal ; but as he did not see that this infirmity attached to them 
wholly on their subjective or constitutional side, while on their 
objective or creative side they were infinite and absolute, he was 
bound to lapse into mere idealism or scepticism, unrelieved by 
aught but the dream of a noumenal background. 

We may smile if we please at the superstitious shifts to which 
Kant's philosophic scepticism reduced him ; but after all, Kant 
was only the legitimate flower of all the inherited culture of the 
world, the helpless logical outcome of bewildered ages of phi- 
losophy. Philosophy herself had never discriminated the objec- 
tive or absolute and creative element in knowledge from its sub- 
jective or merely contingent and constitutional element. And 
when Kant essayed to make the discrimination, what wonder 
that he only succeeded in more hopelessly confounding the two, 
and so adjourning once more the hope of Philosophy to an in- 
definite future ? But Kant's failure to vindicate the philosophic 
truth of creation has only exasperated the intellectual discontent 
of the world with the cosmological data supplied by the old the- 
ologies. Everywhere men of far more tender and reverential 
make even than Kant are being driven to freshness of thought ; 
and thought, though a remorseless solvent, has no reconstructive 
power over truth. Men's opinions are being silently modified in 
fact, whether they will or not. The crudities, the extravagan- 
ces, the contradictions of the old cosmology, now no longer 
amiable and innocent, but aggressive and overbearing, are com- 
pelling inquiry into new channels, are making it no longer possi- 
ble that the notions which satisfied the fathers shall continue to 
satisfy the children. A distinctly supernatural creation, once so 
fondly urged upon our faith, is quite unintelligible to modern 
culture, because it violates experience or contradicts our observa- 
tion of nature. Everything we observe in nature implies to our 
understanding a common or identical substance, being itself a 
particular or individual form of such substance. If then the ob- 
jective form of things were an outward or supernatural com- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 3 

munication to them, it would no longer be their own form, inas- 
much as it would lack all subjective root, all natural basis, and 
confess itself an imposition. Thus, on the hypothesis of a su- 
pernatural creation, every natural object would disclaim a nat- 
ural genesis ; and nature, consequently, as denoting the univer- 
sal or subjective element in existence, would disappear with the 
disappearance of her proper forms. 

Now if nature, in her most generic or universal mood, return 
us at best a discouraging answer to the old problem of creation, 
what answer does she yield in her most specific — which is the 
human or moral — form ? A still more discouraging one even ! 
In fact, the true motive of the intellectual hostility now formu- 
lating to the traditional notion of creation, as an instantaneous 
or magical exhibition of the divine power, as an arbitrary or 
irrational procedure of the divine wisdom — by which the uni- 
versal or substantial element in existence is made, by a summary 
outward fiat, to involve its higher or individual and formal ele- 
ment — is supplied by our moral consciousness, by the irresist- 
ible conviction we feel of our personal identity. That moral or 
personal existence should be outwardly generated, should be 
created in the sense of having being communicated to it super- 
naturally, contradicts consciousness. For moral or personal ex- 
istence is purely conscious or subjective existence, and conscious- 
ness or subjectivity is a strictly natural style of existence, and 
hence disowns all supernatural interference as impertinent. It 
is preposterous to allege that my consciousness or subjectivity 
involves any other person than myself, since this would vitiate 
my personal identity, and hence defeat my possible spiritual in- 
dividuality or character. If, being what I am conscious of being, 
namely, a moral or personal existence invested with self-control 
or the rational ownership of my actions, I yet am not so natu- 
rally or of myself, but by some supernatural or foreign interven- 
tion, then obviously I am simply what such intervention deter- 
mines me to be, and my feeling of selfhood or freedom is grossly 
illusory. Thus morality, which is the assertion of a selfhood in 
man commensurate with all the demands of nature and society 
upon him, turns out, if too rigidly insisted on — if maintained 
as a divine finality, or as having not merely a constitutional, but 
a creative truth, not merely a subjective or phenomenal, but also 



4 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

an objective or real validity — to be essentially atheistic, and 
drives those who are loyal rather to the inward spirit than the 
outward letter of revelation to repugn the old maxims of a su- 
pernatural creation and providence as furnishing any longer a 
satisfactory theorem of existence. 

Faith must reconcile herself to this perilous alternative, if she 
obstinately persist in making our natural morality supernatural 
by allowing it a truth irrespective of consciousness, or assigning 
it any objectivity beyond the evolution of human society or fel- 
lowship. It is not its own end, but a strict means to a higher or 
spiritual evolution of life in our nature ; and they accordingly 
who persist in ignoring this truth must expect to fall intellectual- 
ly behind the time in which they live. Some concession here is 
absolutely necessary to save the religious instinct. For men feel 
a growing obligation to co-ordinate the demands of freedom or 
personality with the limitations of science ; and since Kant's re- 
morseless criticism stops them off — under penalty of accepting 
his impracticable noumenal world — from postulating any longer 
an objective being answering to their subjective seeming, they 
must needs with his successors give the whole question of crea- 
tion the go-by, in quietly resolving the minor element of the 
equation into the major, man into God, or making the finite a 
mere transient experience of the infinite, by means of which 
that great unconsciousness attains to selfhood. For this is the 
sum of the Hegelian dialectic, to confound existence with being, 
or make identity no longer serve individuality, but absorb or 
swallow it up : so bringing back creation to intellectual chaos, 
which is naught. 

I myself, in common w T ith most men doubtless, feel an in- 
stinctive repugnance to these insane logical results ; but instinct 
is not intelligence, and sophistry can be combated only by in- 
telligence. Now, to my mind, nothing so effectually arms the 
intellect against error, whether it be the error of the sceptic or 
the error of the fanatic, whether it reflect our prevalent religious 
cant or our almost equally prevalent scientific cant, as a due ac- 
quaintance and familiarity with the ontological principles of 
Swedenborg. Emanuel Swedenborg, I need not say, is by no 
means as yet " a name to conjure with " in polite circles, and, 
for aught I opine, may never become one. Nevertheless nu- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. O 

merous independent students are to be found, who, having been 
long hopeless of getting to the bottom of our endless controver- 
sies, confess that their intellectual doubts have at last been dis- 
persed by the sunshine of his ontology. It would be small 
praise of Swedenborg to say that he does not, like Hegel, be- 
numb our spiritual instincts, or drown them out in a flood of 
vainglorious intoxication brought about by an absurd exaltation 
of the subjective element in life above the objective one. This 
praise no doubt is true, but much more is true ; and that is, that 
he enlightens the religious conscience, and so gives the intellect 
a repose which it has lacked throughout history — a repose as 
natural and therefore as sane and sweet as the sleep of infancy. 
Admire Hegel's legerdemain as much as you will, his ability to 
make light darkness and darkness light in all the field of man's 
relations to God ; but remember also that it is characteristic of 
the highest truth to be accessible to common minds, and inacces- 
sible only to ambitious ones. Tried by this test, the difference 
between the two writers is incomparably in favor of Sweden- 
borg. For example what a complete darkening of our intellect- 
ual optics is operated by Hegel's fundamental postulate of the 
identity of object and subject, being and thought. " Thought 
and being are identical." Such indeed is the necessary logic of 
idealism. Now doubtless our faculty of abstract thought is chief 
among our intellectual faculties ; but when it is seriously pro- 
posed to build the universe of existence upon a logical abstrac- 
tion, one must needs draw a very long breath. For thought by 
itself affords a most inadequate basis even to our own conscious 
activity ; and when, therefore, our unconscious being is in ques- 
tion, it confesses itself a simply ludicrous hypothesis. 

But in reality Hegel, in spite of his extreme pretension in 
that line, never once got within point-blank range of the true 
problem of ontology ; and this because he habitually confounded 
being with existence, spirit with nature. By being he never 
meant being, but always existence, the existence we are con- 
scious of; so that when he would grasp the infinite, he fancied 
he had only to resort to the cheap expedient of eliminating the 
finite. It is precisely as if a man should say : " All I need in 
order to procure myself an intuitive knowledge of my own 
visage, is not to look at its reflection in the looking-glass." 



6 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

Think the finite away, said Hegel, and the infinite is left on 
your hands. Yes, provided the infinite is never a positive 
quantity, but only and at most a thought-negation of its own 
previously thought-negation. But really, if the infinite be this 
mere negation of its own negation, that is, if being turns out 
to be identical with nothing, with the absence of mere tiring, 
then I must say, in the first place, that I do not see why any 
sane person should covet its acquaintance. Being which has 
been so utterly compromised, and indeed annihilated, by its own 
phenomenal forms, as to be able to reappear only by their dis- 
appearance, is scarcely the being which unsophisticated men 
will ever be persuaded to deem infinite or creative. But then 
I must also say, in the second place, let it be true, as Hegel 
alleges, that being is identical with the absence of thing, that is, 
with nothing, I still am at an litter loss to understand how 
that leaves it identical with pure thought. I need not deny 
that I hold thing and thought to be by any means identical ; 
but I am free to maintain nevertheless that if you actually ab- 
stract things from thought, you simply render thought itself 
exanimate. For thought has no vehicle or body but language, 
and language owes all its soul or inspiration to things. Ab- 
stract things then, and neither thought nor language actually 
survives. You might as well expect the body to survive its 
soul. 

But in truth this metaphysic chatter is the mere wantonness 
of sense. The infinite is so far from being negative of the finite, 
that it is essentially creative — and hence exclusively affirma- 
tive — of it. The finite indeed is only that inevitable diffraction 
of itself which the infinite undergoes in the medium or mirror 
of our sensuous thought, in order so to adapt itself to our dim 
intelligence. It is accordingly no less absurd for us to postulate 
a disembodied or unrevealed infinite — an infinite unrobed or 
unrepresented by the finite — than it would be to demand a 
father unavouched by a child. The infinite is the sole reality 
which underlies all finite appearance, and in that tender unob- 
trusive way makes itself conceivable to our obtuse thought. 
Should we get any nearer this reality by spurning the gracious 
investiture through which alone it becomes appreciable to us ? 
Is a man's intelligence of nature improved, on the whole, by 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 7 

putting out his eyes ? If, then, the infinite reveals itself to our 
nascent understanding only by the finite — i. e. by what we 
already sensibly know — how much nearer should we come to 
its knowledge by rejecting such revelation ? We who are not 
infinite cannot know it absolutely or in itself, but only as it veils 
or abates its splendor to the capacity of our tender vision, — 
only as it reproduces itself within our finite lineaments. In a 
word, our knowledge of it is no way intuitive, but exclusively 
empirical. Would our chances of realizing such knowledge be 
advanced, then, by following Hegel's counsel, and disowning 
that apparatus of finite experience by which alone it becomes 
mirrored to our intelligence ? In other words, suppose a man 
desirous to know what manner of man he is : were it better for 
him, in that case, to proceed by incontinently smashing his,look- 
ing-glass, or by devoutly pondering its revelations ? The ques- 
tion answers itself. The glass may be by no means achromatic ; 
it may return indeed a most refractory reply to the man's inter- 
rogatory ; but nevertheless it is his only method of actually 
compassing the information he covets, and in the estimation 
of all wise men he will stamp himself an incorrigible fool if 
he breaks it. 

But the truth is too plain to need argument. There is no 
antagonism of infinite and finite except to our foolish regard. 
On the contrary, there is the exact harmony or adjustment be- 
tween them that there is between substance and shadow : the 
infinite being that which really or absolutely is, and the finite 
that which actually or contingently appears. The infinite is 
the faultless substance which, unseen itself, vivifies all finite 
existence ; the finite is the fallacious shadow which neverthe- 
less attests that substance. The shadow has no pretension 
absolutely to be, but only to exist or appear as a necessary 
projection or image of the substance upon our intellectual 
retina; and when consequently we wink the shadow out of 
sight, we do not thereby acuminate our vision, we simply 
obliterate it. That is to say, we do not thereby approximate 
our silly selves to the infinite, but simply degrade them out 
of the finite into the void inane of the indefinite. To you 
who are not being, being can become known only as finite or 
phenomenal existence. If then you abstract the finite, the 



8 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

realm of the phenomenal, you not only miss the infinite sub- 
stance you seek to know, but also and even the very shadow 
itself upon which your faculty of knowledge is suspended. 
Such, however, was the abysmal absurdity locked away in 
Hegel's dialectic, which remorselessly confounds infinite form 
and finite substance, real or objective being with phenomenal 
or subjective seeming ; which in fact turns creation upside 
down, by converting it from an orderly procedure of the divine 
love and wisdom into a tipsy imbroglio, where what is lowest 
to thought is made to mvolve what is highest, and what is 
highest in its turn to evolve what is lowest : so that God and 
man, creator and creature, in place of being eternally indi- 
vidualized or objectified to each other's regard, become mutu- 
ally undiscoverable, being hopelessly swamped to sight in the 
ineffectual mush of each other's subjective identity. But 
what is Hegel's supreme shame in the eyes of philosophy, 
namely, his utter unscrupulous abandonment of himself to the 
inspiration of idealism, will constitute his true distinction to 
the future historiographer of philosophy. For idealism has 
been the secret blight of philosophy ever since men began to 
speculate ; and what Hegel has done for philosophy in run- 
ning idealism into the ground, has been to bring this secret 
blight to the surface, so exposing it to all eyes, and making 
it impossible for human fatuity ever to go a step further, in that 
direction at all events. 

The correction which Swedenborg brings to this pernicious 
idealistic bent of the mind consists in the altogether novel 
light he sheds upon the constitution of consciousness, and 
particularly upon the fundamental discrimination which that 
constitution announces between the phenomenal identity of 
things and their real individuality ; between the subjective or 
merely quantifying element in existence, and its objective or 
properly qualifying one. The old philosophy was blind to this 
sharp discrimination in the constitution of existence. It re- 
garded existence, not as a composite, but as a simple quantity, 
and consequently sank the spiritual element in things in their 
natural element — sank what gives them individuality, life, soul, 
in what gives them identity, existence, body ; in other words 
sank the creative element in existence — what causes it absolutely 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 9 

or objectively to he — in its constitutive or generative element, 
in what causes it phenomenally or subjectively to appear. For 
example, what was its conception of man ? It regarded him 
simply on his moral side, which presents him as essentially 
selfish or inveterately objective to himself, and left his spirit- 
ual possibilities, which present him as essentially social, or 
spontaneously subject to his neighbor, wholly unrecognized.* 
In short, it separated him from the face of deity by all the 
breadth of nature and all the length of history ; and suspended 
his return upon some purely arbitrary interference exerted by 
deity upon the course of nature and the progress of history. 

Swedenborg's analysis of consciousness stamps these judg- 
ments as sensuous or immature, and restores man to the inti- 
mate fellowship of God. Consciousness according to Sweden- 
borg claims two most disproportionate generative elements ; — 
one universal, subjective, passive, organic ; the other, particular, 
objective, human, active, free. The former element gives us 
fixity or limitation ; universalizes or identifies us, by relating us 
to the outward and finite, i. e. to nature. The latter element 
gives us freedom, which is cZe-limitation or c?e-finition ; partic- 
ularizes or individualizes us, by relating us to the inward and 
infinite, i. e. to God. This latter element is absolute and cre- 
ative, for it gives us potential being before we actually exist or 
become conscious. The other element is merely phenomenal 
and constitutive, making us exist or go forth to our own con- 
sciousness in due cosmical place and order. 

Now the immense bearing which this analysis of conscious- 
ness exerts upon cosmological speculation, or the question of 
creation, becomes at once obvious when we reflect that it utterly 
inverts the long-established supremacy of subject to object in 
existence, and so demolishes at a blow the sole philosophic haunt 
of idealism or scepticism. The great scientific value of the 
Critical Philosophy lay in Kant's making manifest the latent 
malady of the old philosophy by dogmatically affiliating object 
to subject, the not-me to the me. His followers only proved 

* The best and briefest definition of moral existence is, the alliance of an inward 
subject and an outward object ; and of spiritual existence, the alliance of an outward 
subject and an inward object. Thus in moral existence what is public or universal 
dominates what is private or individual ; whereas in spiritual existence the case 
is reversed, and the outward serves the inward. 
2 



10 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

themselves to be his too apt disciples, in endeavoring to paint 
and adorn this ghastly disease with the ruddy hues of health, 
by running philosophy into pure or objective idealism. For if 
the subjective element in existence alone identifies it or gives it 
universality, then manifestly we cannot allow it also to individu- 
alize it or give it unity, without making the being of things 
purely subjective, and hence denying it any objective reality. 
Kant is scrupulously logical. He accepts the deliverance of 
sense as final, that the me determines the not-me; that the con- 
scious or phenomenal element in experience controls its un- 
conscious or real one ; and hence he cannot help denying any 
absolute truth to creation. He cannot help maintaining that 
however much the creator may be, he will at any rate never be 
able to appear ; that however infinite or perfect he may claim to 
be in himself, that very infinitude must always prevent him in- 
carnating himself in the finite, and consequently forbid any true 
revelation of his perfection to an imperfect intelligence. And 
Mr. Mansel, who is Kant's intellectual grandson, is so tickled 
with this sceptical fatuity on the part of his sire, as to find in it 
a new and fascinating base for our religious homage ; and he 
does not hesitate accordingly to argue that the only stable motive 
to our faith in God is supplied by ignorance, not by knowledge ; 
or, what is the same thing, by fear, not by love. 

Swedenborg, I repeat, effectually silences these ravings of 
philosophic despair by simply rectifying the basis of philosophy, 
or affirming an absolute as well as an empirical element in 
consciousness, an infinite as well as a finite element in knowl- 
edge. He provides a real or objective, no less than a phe- 
nomenal or subjective, element in existence ; an element of un- 
conditional being as well as of conditional seeming ; a creative 
element, in short, no less than a constitutive one. This absolute 
or infinite element in existence is what qualifies the existence, is 
what gives it distinctive life or soul, and so permits it to be 
objectively individualized as man, horse, tree, stone; while its 
empirical or finite element merely quantifies it, or gives it 
phenomenal body, and so permits it to be subjectively identified 
as Unglish-man, French-man ; race-horse, draught-horse ; fruit- 
tree, forest-tree ; sa?id-stone, limestone. Or let us take some 
artificial existence, say a statue. Now of the two elements 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOKG. 11 

which go to make up the statue, one ideal, the other material, 

— one objective or formal, the other subjective or substantial, 

— the latter, according to Swedenborg, finites the statue, fixes 
it, incorporates it, gives it outward body, and thus universalizes 
or identifies it with other existence ; while the former m-finites 
it, frees it from material bondage, vivifies it, gives it inward soul, 
and so individualizes it from all other existence. Thus the 
statue as an ideal form, or on its qualitative side, is absolute and 
infinite with all its maker's absoluteness and infinitude ; and it is 
only as a material substance, or on its quantitative side, that 
it turns out contingent, finite, infirm. 

This discrimination, so important in every point of view to 
the intellect, gives us the key to Swedenborg's ontology, his 
doctrine of the Lord or Maximus Homo. Swedenborg's cos- 
mological principles make the natural world a necessary impli- 
cation of the spiritual, and consequently make the spiritual 
world the only safe or adequate explication of the natural. In 
short, his theory of creation assigns a rigidly natural genesis 
and growth to the spiritual world ; and as this theory is sum- 
marily comprised in his doctrine of the God-Man or Divine 
Natural Humanity, I shall proceed to test the philosophic worth 
of this doctrine, by applying it to the problem of our human 
origin and destiny. But before doing this it may be expedient 
briefly to recall who and what Swedenborg was, in order to as- 
certain whether his private history sheds any light upon his dog- 
matic pretensions. 

I. 

It is known to all the world that Swedenborg, for many years 
before his death, assumed to be an authorized herald of a new 
and spiritual divine advent in human nature. Similar assump- 
tions are not infrequent in history, and it cannot be denied that 
our proper a priori attitude toward them is one of contempt 
and aversion. But Swedenborg's alleged mission, both as he 
himself conceived it and as his books represent it, claimed no 
personal or outward sanction, and accepted no voucher but what 
it found in every man's unforced delight in the truth to which 
it ministered. He was himself remarkably deficient in those 



12 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

commanding personal qualities and graces of intellect which 
attract popular esteem ; and I am quite sure that no such in- 
sanity ever entered his OAvn guileless heart as to attribute to 
himself the power of complicating in any manner the existing 
relations of man and God. 

Swedenborg, as we learn from his latest and best biographer, . 
Mr. White,* — whose work is almost a model in its kind, and 
does emphatic credit both to his intellect and conscience, — was 
born at Stockholm in 1688. His father, who was a Swedish 
bishop distinguished for learning and piet} r , christened the infant 
Emanuel, " in order that his name might continually remind 
him of the nearness of God, and of that interior, holy, and 
mysterious union in which we stand to him." The youth thus 
devoutly consecrated justified all his father's hopes, for his 
entire life was devoted to science, religion, and philosophy. His 
history, as we find it related by Mr. White, was unmarked by 
any striking external vicissitudes ; and his pursuits were at all 
times so purely intellectual as to leave personal gossip almost no 
purchase upon his modest and blameless career. He held the 
office for many years of Government Assessor of Mines, and 
appears to have enjoyed friendly and even intimate personal 
relations with Charles XII., to whose ability as a mathematician 
his diary affords some interesting testimonies. While he was 
not professionally active, his days were devoted to study and 
travel ; and by the time he had reached his fiftieth year, his 
scholarly and scientific repute had been advanced and established 
by several publications of great interest. We may say generally 
that the pursuits of science claimed all his attention till he was 
upwards of fifty years old ; that his life and manners were pure 
and irreproachable, and his intellectual aspirations singularly 
elevated. To arrive at the knowledge of the soul by the 
strictest methods of science had always been his hope and 
endeavor. He conceived that the body, being the fellow of the 
soul, was in some sort its continuation ; and that if he could 
only penetrate therefore to its purest forms or subtlest essences, 
he would be sure of touching at last the soul's true territory. 
Long and fruitless toil had somewhat disenchanted him of this 

* Emanuel Swedenborg : his Life and "Writings. By William White. London, 
1867. 2 Vols. 8vo. See Appendix, Xote A. 



THE SECRET OP SWEDENBOEG. 13 

illusion previously ; but what lie calls " the opening of his 
spiritual sight," which event means his becoming acquainted 
with the spiritual sense of the scriptures, or the truth of the 
Divine Natural Humanity, effectually put an end to it, by 
convincing him that the tie between soul and body, or spirit and 
letter, is not by any means one of sensible continuity, as from 
finer to grosser, but one exclusively of rational correspondence, 
such as obtains between cause and effect. From this moment, 
accordingly, he abandoned his scientific studies, and applied 
himself with intense zeal to the unfolding of the spiritual sense 
of the scriptures " from things seen and heard in the spiritual 
world." This internal sense of the scriptures is very unat- 
tractive reading to those who care more for entertainment than 
instruction, and I cannot counsel any one of a merely literary 
turn to undertake it. But it is full of marrow and fatness to a 
philosophic curiosity, from the flood of novel light it lets in upon 
history; its substantial import being, that the history of the 
church on earth, which is the history of human development up 
to a comparatively recent period, has been only a stupendous 
symbol, or cover, under which secrets of the widest creative 
scope and efficacy, issues of the profoundest humanitary signifi- 
cance, were all the while assiduously transacting. It is fair to 
suppose, therefore, that our sense of the worth of Swedenborg's 
spiritual pretensions will be somewhat biassed by the estimate 
we habitually put upon the church as an instrument of human 
progress. If we suppose church and state to have been purely 
accidental determinations of man's history, owning no obligation 
to his selfish beginnings on the one hand, nor to his social 
destiny on the other, we shall not probably lend much attention 
to the information proffered by Swedenborg. But if we believe 
with him that the realm of "accident," however vast to sense, 
has absolutely no existence to the reason emancipated from 
sense, we shall probably regard the church, and its derivative 
the state, as claiming a true divine appointment ; and we may 
find consequently in his ideas of its meaning and history an ap- 
proximate justification of his claim to spiritual insight. At all 
events no lower justification of his claim is for a moment 
admissible to a rational regard. As I have already said, his 
books are singularly void of literary fascination. I know of no 



14 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. - 

writer with anything like his intellectual force who is so per- 
sistently feeble in point of argumentative or persuasive skill. 
His books teem with the grandest, the most humane and gen- 
erous truth ; but his reverence for it is so austere and vital, 
that, like the lover who willingly makes himself of no account 
beside his mistress, he seems always intent upon effacing himself 
from sight before its matchless lustre. Certainly the highest 
truth never encountered a more lowly intellectual homage than 
it gets in these artless books ; never found itself so unosten- 
tatiously heralded, so little patronized in a word, or left so com- 
pletely for its success to its own sheer unadorned majesty. 

It must be admitted also that the books, upon a superficial 
survey, repel philosophic as much as literary curiosity, by sug- 
gesting the notion of an irreconcilable conflict between our 
conscious or phenomenal freedom and our unconscious or real 
dependence. To a cursory glance they appear to assert an 
endless warfare between the interests of our natural morality 
on the one hand, and of our spiritual destiny on the other. It 
seems, for example, to be taught by Swedenborg, that human 
morality serves such important theoretic ends in the economy 
of creation, that it may even be allowed to render the creature 
utterly hostile to the creator, or endow him with a faculty of 
spiritual suicide, and yet itself incur no reproach. In other 
words, our moral freedom is apparently made to claim such ex- 
treme consideration at the divine hands, in consequence of its 
eminent uses to the spiritual life, as justifies it in absolutely 
deflecting us, if need be, from the paths of peace, and landing 
us ultimately in chronic spiritual disaffection to our maker. 
Such no doubt is the surface aspect of these remarkable books — 
the aspect they wear to a hasty and prejudiced observation ; 
and if the reality of the case were at all conformable to the 
appearance, nothing favorable of course would remain to be 
said, since no sharper affront could well be offered to the crea- 
tive perfection, than to suppose it baffled by the inveterate im- 
becility of its own helpless creature. 

But the reality of the case is by no means answerable to this 
surface seeming ; and it is only from gross inattention to what 
we mav call the author's commanding intellectual doctrine — 
his doctrine of the Lord or Maximus Homo — that a contrary 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 15 

impression prevails to the prejudice of his philosophic repute. 
This doctrine claims, in the estimation of those who discern its 
profound intellectual significance, to be the veritable apothe- 
osis of philosophy. What then does the doctrine practically 
amount to ? It amounts, briefly stated, to this : that what we 
call nature, meaning by that term the universe of existence, 
mineral, vegetable, and animal, which seems to us infinite in 
point of space and eternal in point of time, is yet in itself, or 
absolutely, void both of infinity and eternity ; the former ap- 
pearance being only a sensible product and correspondence of 
a relation which the universal heart of man is under to the 
divine love, and the latter, a product and correspondence of 
the relation which the universe of the human mind is under 
to the divine wisdom. Thus nature is not in the least what it 
sensibly purports to be, namely, absolute and independent ; 
but, on the contrary, is at every moment, both in whole and 
in part, a pure phenomenon or effect of spiritual causes as 
deep, as contrasted, and yet as united, as God's infinite love 
and man's unfathomable want. In short, Swedenborg describes 
nature as a perpetual outcome or product in the sphere of 
sense of an inward supersensuous marriage which is forever 
growing and forever adjusting itself between creator and crea- 
ture, between God's infinite and essential bounty and our in- 
finite and essential necessity. But these statements are too 
brief not to require elucidation. 

IL 

Let it be understood, then, first of all, that creation, in Swe- 
denborg's view, is of necessity a composite, not a simple, 
movement, inasmuch as it is bound to provide for the creature's 
subjective existence, no less than his objective being. The 
creature, in order to be created, in order truly to be, must 
exist or go forth from the creator ; and he can thus exist or 
go forth only in Ms own form, of course. Thus creation, or the 
giving absolute being to things, logically involves a subordinate 
process of making, which is the giving them phenomenal or 
conscious form. In fact, upon this strictly incidental process 
of formation, the entire truth of creation philosophically pivots ; 



16 THE SECRET OF SwEDEXBORG. 

for unless the creator be able to give his creature subjective 
identity (which is natural alienation from, or otherness than, 
himself), he will never succeed in giving him objective individ- 
uality, which is spiritual oneness with himself. In other words, 
the creature can enjoy no real or objective conjunction with the 
creator, save in so far as he shall previously have undergone 
phenomenal or conscious disjunction with him. His spiritual 
or specific fellowship with the creator presupposes his natural 
or generic inequality with him. In short, the interests of 
the creature's natural identity dominate those of his spirit- 
ual individuality to such an extent that he remains absolutely 
void of being, save in so far as he exists or goes forth in his 
own proper lineaments. If creation were by possibility the 
direct act of divine omnipotence, which men superstitiously 
deem it to be — in other words, if God could create man magi- 
cally, i. e. without any necessary implication of man himself, 
without any implication of his mineral, vegetable, and animal 
nature — then of course creator and creature would be undis- 
tinguishable, and creation fail to avouch itself. Thus the total 
truth of creation spiritually regarded hinges upon its being a 
reflex not a direct, a composite not a simple, a rational not an 
arbitrary exertion of divine power — hinges, in short, upon 
its supplying a subjective and phenomenal development to the 
creature every way commensurate with, or adequate to, the ob- 
jective and absolute being he has in the creator. 

We may clearly maintain, then, that the truth of creation is 
wholly contingent upon the truth of the creature's identity. If 
the creator is able to afford the creature valid selfhood or 
identity, then creation is philosophically conceivable, otherwise 
not. All that philosophy needs, in permanent illustration of 
the creative name, is to rescue the creature subjectively re- 
garded from the creator, or put his identity upon an inexpug- 
nable basis. To create or give being to things is no doubt an 
inscrutable function of the divine omnipotence, to which our 
intelligence is incapable of assigning any a priori law or limit. 
But we are clearly competent to say a posteriori of the things 
thus created, that they are only in so far as they exist or go 
forth in their own form. That is to say, they must, in order 
to their being true creatures of God, not only possess spirit- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 17 

ual form or objectivity in him, as the statue has ideal form or 
objectivity in the genius of the sculptor, or the child moral 
form or objectivity in the loins of his father, but they must 
actually go forth from him, or exist in their own proper sub- 
stance, in their own constitutional identity, just as the statue 
exists in the appropriate constitutional substance which the 
marble gives it, or the child in the proper constitutional linea- 
ments with which the mother invests it. The legal maxim is, 
de non apparentibus et non existentihus eadem est ratio. The 
philosophic demand is broader. It says, no esse without exis- 
tere ; no reality without corresponding actuality ; no soul with- 
out body ; no form without substance ; no being without mani- 
festation ; in short, no creation on God's part save in so far as 
there is a rigidly constitutional response and reaction on ours. 
The creative perfection is wholly active ; that is to say, God 
is true creator only to the extent that we in our measure are 
true creatures. Thus, before creation can be worthy of its name, 
worthy either of God to claim it or of us to acknowledge it save 
in a lifeless, traditional way, it implies a subjective experience 
on our part, an historic evolution or process of formation, by 
which we become eternally projected from God, or endowed 
with inalienable self-consciousness, and so qualified for his sub- 
sequent spiritual fellowship and converse. In other words, crea- 
tion is practically and of necessity to our experience a formative 
or historic process, exhibiting a descent of the divine nature ex- 
actly proportionate to the elevation of the human, and so pre- 
senting creator and creature in indissoluble union. This is the 
inexorable postulate of creation, that the creature be himself — 
have selfhood or subjective life — a life as distinctively his own 
as God's life is distinctively his own. Not only must the crea- 
ture aspire, instinctively and innocently aspire, " to be like God, 
knowing good and evil," i. e. to be sufficient unto himself, but the 
creative perfection is bound to ratify that aspiration, and endow its 
creature with all its own wealth of goodness and wisdom. The 
aspiration itself is the deepest motion of the divine spirit within 
us. It is impossible to be spiritually begotten of God without 
desiring to be like him ; that is, to be wise and good even as 
he is, not from constraint or the prompting of expediency, but 
spontaneously, or from a serene inward delight in goodness and 



18 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

wisdom. Evidently no fellowship between God and our own 
souls is possible until this instinct be appeased ; for up to that 
event all our life will have been only the concealed motion of 
his spirit in our nature. He alone will have been really living 
in us, while we ourselves will have only seemed to live — will 
have been, in fact, mere unconscious masks of his life. 

Now how shall creation ever be seen to bear this surprising 
fruit ? From the nature of the case, creation must be a purely 
spiritual operation on God's part, since he alone is, and there is 
nothing outside of him whence the creature may be summoned. 
By the hypothesis of creation, God alone is, and the creature 
exclusively by him. How is it conceivable, therefore, to our 
intelligence, that the creature should possess selfhood or subjec- 
tive identity, without a compromise to that extent of the divine 
unity ? How is it conceivable that God, the sole being, should 
himself create or give being to other existence without impair- 
ing to that extent his own infinitude ? The creature has no 
being which he does not derive from the creator ; this is obvious. 
And yet the hypothesis of creation binds us to regard the creator 
as communicating his own being to another, without any limita- 
tion of its fulness. The demand of our intelligence is insatia- 
ble, therefore, until it ascertain how these things can be — until 
it perceive how it is that the creator is able to impart selfhood 
or moral power to the absolutely dependent offspring of his own 
hands, the abjectly helpless offspring of his own perfection. By 
an indomitable instinct the mind claims to know, and will never 
rest accordingly until it discover, what it is which validly sepa- 
rates creature from creator, and so permits their subsequent union, 
not only without violence to either interest, but with consum- 
mate reciprocal advantage and beatitude to both interests. 

It is exactly here — in giving us light upon this most momen- 
tous and most mysterious inquiry — that what Swedenborg calls 
"the opening of his spiritual sight," or his discovery of" the 
spiritual sense of the scriptures," professes to make itself of end- 
less avail. What the literal sense of revelation is, we all know 
familiarly. We have been too familiar with it, in fact, not to 
have had our spiritual perceptions somewhat overlaid by it. It 
represents creation as a work of God conceived and accomplished 
in space and time, and consequently makes the relation of 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 19 

creator and creature essentially outward and personal. Now 
" the spiritual sense " of scripture as reported by Swedenborg 
is not a new or different literal sense. It is not the least literal, 
inasmuch as it utterly disowns the obligations of space and 
time, and claims the exclusive authentication of an infinite love 
and wisdom. In short, by the spiritual or living sense of 
revelation, Swedenborg means the truth of God's natural 
humanity ; so that all our natural prepossessions in regard to 
space and time and person confess themselves purely rudimental 
and educative, the moment we come to acknowledge in nature 
and man an infinite divine substance. It is true, no doubt, 
that Swedenborg's doctrine of creation falls, without constraint, 
into the literal terms of the orthodox dogma of the incarnation. 
But then the letter of revelation bears, as he demonstrates, so 
inverse a relation to its living spirit, that we can get no help but 
only hindrance, from any attempt to interpret his statements by 
the light of dogmatic theology. Dogmatic theology is bound 
hand and foot by the letter of revelation ; and the letter of 
revelation " is adapted," says Swedenborg, " only to the appre- 
hension of simple or unenlightened men, in order that they 
may thus be introduced to the acquaintance of interior and 
higher verities." Again he says, " Three things of the lit- 
eral sense perish, when the spiritual sense of the word is 
evolving, namely, whatsoever belongs to space, to time, or to 
person" ; and still again, "In heaven no attention is paid to 
person, nor the things of person, but to things abstracted from 
person ; thus angels have no perception of any person whose 
name is mentioned in the word, but only of his human quality 
or faculty." Hence he describes those who are in spiritual ideas 
as never thinking of the lord from person, " because thought 
determined to person limits and degrades the truth, while 
thought undetermined to person gives it infinitude " ; and he 
adds, that the angels are amazed at the stupidity of church 
people, " in not suffering themselves to be elevated out of the 
letter of revelation, and persisting to think carnally, and not 
spiritually of the lord, — as of his flesh and blood, and not 
of his infinite goodness and truth." * 

* Arcana Celestia, 8705, 5253, 9007 ; and Apocalypse Explained, 30. 



20 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 



III. 



It is manifestly idle, then, to attempt coercing the large 
philosophic scope of Swedenborg's doctrine within the dimen- 
sions of our narrow ecclesiastical dogma. There is as real a 
contrast and oppugnancy between the two to the intellect, as 
there is to the stomach between a loaf of bread and a paving- 
stone. For example, it is vital to the dogmatic view of the 
incarnation to regard it as an event completely included in 
space and time, and yet brought about by supernatural power, 
acting in direct contravention of the course of nature. A dog- 
ma of this stolid countenance bluffs the intellect off from its 
wonted activity no less effectually, of course, than a stone taken 
into the stomach arrests the digestive circulation. With Swe 
denborg, on the other hand, the christian facts utterly refute 
this supernatural conception of the divine existence and opera- 
tion, or reduce it to a superstition, by proving nature herself, 
in the very crisis of her outward disorder, to have been in- 
wardly alive with all divine order, peace, and power. Accord- 
ing to Swedenborg, the birth, the life, the death, the resurrec- 
tion of Christ were so remote from supernatural contingencies 
as to confess themselves the consummate flowering of the cre- 
ative energy in universal nature, i. e. the universe of the human 
mind, embracing heaven and hell quite equally. No doubt the 
flower is a very marked phenomenon to the senses, filling the 
atmosphere with its glory and fragrance. But its total interest 
to the rational mind turns upon those hidden affinities which, by 
means of its aspiring stem and its grovelling roots, connect it at 
once with all that is loftiest and all that is lowliest in universal 
nature, and so turn the flower itself into a sensuous sign merely 
or modest emblem of a secret most holy marriage, which is for- 
ever transacting in unseen depths of being, between the generic, 
universal, or merely animate substances of the mind, and its 
specific, unitary, or human form. So with the incarnation. 
The literal facts have no significance to the spiritual under- 
standing, save as a natural ultimate and revelation of the true 
principles of creative order, the order that binds the universe 
of existence to its source. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 21 

What are these principles ? They are all summed up in the 
truth of the essential divine humanity. According to Sweden- 
borg, God is essential Man ; so that creation, instead of being 
primarily a sensible product of divine power, or a work ac- 
complished in space and time, turns out first of all a spiritual 
achievement of the divine love and wisdom in all the forms 
of human nature, and only subordinately to that a thing of 
physical dimensions. Swedenborg enforces this truth very 
copiously in the way of illustration, but never in that of ratio- 
cination. His reason for this abstention is very instructive. 
Swedenborg distinguishes as no person has ever done between 
two orders of truth — truth of being, ontological truth, truths 
of conscience in short ; and truth of seeming, phenomenal 
truth, truths of science in short. The distinction between 
these two orders of truth is, that the former is not probable, 
that is to say, admits of no sensuous proof ; while the latter is 
essentially probable, i. e. capable of being proved by sensuous 
reasoning. The French proverb says, the true is not always 
the probable. Now with Swedenborg, the true — the supremely 
true — is never the probable, that is, finds no countenance in 
outward likelihood, but derives all its support from the inward 
sanction of the heart. Facts — which are matter of outward 
observation or science — may be reasoned about to any extent, 
and legitimately established by reasoning. But truth — which 
is matter of inward experience or conscience — owns no such 
dependence, and invites no homage but that of a modest, un- 
ostentatious Yea, yea ! Nay, nay ! The philosophic ground 
of this state of things is obvious. For if the case were other- 
wise, if truth, truths of life, could be reasoned into us, or be 
made ours by force of persuasion, then belief would no longer 
be free ; that is to say, it would no longer reflect the love of 
the heart, but control or coerce it. In other words, the truth 
believed would no longer be the truth we inwardly love and 
crave, but only that which has most outward prestige or 
authority to back it. In that event, of course, our affections, 
which ally us with infinitude or God, would be at the mer- 
cy of our intelligence, which allies us with nature or the 
finite. And life consequently, instead of being the sponta- 
neous indissoluble marriage of heart and head which it really 



22 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

is, would confess itself at most their voluntary or chance con- 
cubinage. 

I have no pretension, of course, to decide dogmatically for 
the reader whether what Swedenborg calls the Divine Natural 
Humanity be the commanding truth he supposes it to be, or 
whether it be a mere otiose hypothesis. But I am bound 
to assist him, so far as I am able, to decide these questions 
for himself; and I cannot do this more effectually than by 
fixing his attention for a while upon what is involved in the 
middle term of Swedenborg's proposition, since we are apt to 
cherish very faulty conceptions of what nature logically com- 
prises. Swedenborg's doctrine summarily stated is, that what 
we call nature, and suppose to be exactly what it seems, is in 
truth a thing of strictly human and strictly divine dimensions 
both as being at one and the same moment a just exponent of 
the creature's essential want or finiteness, and of the creator's 
essential fulness or infinitude. In other words, where people 
whose understanding is still controlled by sense, see nature 
absolute or unqualified by spirit, Swedenborg, professing to 
be spiritually enlightened, does not see nature at all, but only 
the lord, or God-Man, carnally hidden indeed, degraded, hu- 
miliated, crucified under all manner of devout pride and self- 
seeking, but at the same time spiritually exalted or glorified by 
a love untainted with selfishness, and a wisdom undimmed by 
prudence. Manifestly then, in order to do justice to Sweden- 
borg's doctrine, we must rid ourselves first of all of certain 
sensuous prejudices we cherish in regard to nature ; and to 
this aim we shall now for a moment address ourselves. 

Nature is all that our senses embrace ; thus it is whatsoever 
appears to be. Now the two universals of this phenomenal or 
apparitional world are space and time ; for whatsoever sensibly 
exists, exists in space and time, or implies extension and dura- 
tion. Space and time have thus a fixed or absolute status to 
our senses, so furnishing our spiritual understanding with that 
firm though dusty earth of fact or knowledge, upon which it 
may forever ascend into the serene expansive heaven of truth 
or belief. But now observe ; just because space and time, 
which make up our notion of nature, are thus absolute to our 
senses, we are led in the infancy of science, or while the senses 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 23 

still dominate the intellect, to confer upon nature a logical 
absoluteness or reality which in truth is wholly fallacious. We 
habitually ascribe a rational or supersensuous reality to her, as 
well as a sensible ; or regard the universe of space and time, 
not only as the needful implication of our subjective or con- 
scious existence, but as an ample explication also of our 
objective or unconscious being. And every such conception of 
the part nature plays in creation is puerile, and therefore mis- 
leading or fatal to a spiritual apprehension of truth. 

This may be seen at a glance. For if you consent to make 
nature absolute as well as contingent — that is, if you make 
it be irrespectively of our intelligence, which you do whenever 
you reflectively exalt space and time from sensible into rational 
quantities — then, of course, you disjoin infinite and finite, God 
and man, creator and creature, not only phenomenally but 
really ; not only ah intra or in se, but also and much more ah 
extra, or by all the literal breadth of nature's extension, and 
all the literal length of her duration : so swamping spiritual 
thought in the bottomless mire of materialism. For obviously 
if you thus operate a real or spiritual disjunction between God 
and man, you can never hope to bring about that actual or 
literal conjunction between them which Swedenborg affirms in 
his doctrine of the Divine Natural Humanity, save by hyposta- 
tizing some preposterous mediator as big as the universe and as 
ancient as the world. In short, you will be driven in this state 
of things spiritually to reconcile God and man, or put them 
at-one, only by inventing a style of personality so egregiously 
finite or material as literally to embody in itself all nature's 
indefinite spaces, and all her indeterminate times. 

Thus, according to Swedenborg, sensuous conceptions of 
truth — the habit we have of estimating appearances as reali- 
ties — are the grand intellectual hindrance we experience to 
the acknowledgment of a creation in which creator and creature 
are spiritually united. Evidently, then, our only mode of exit 
from the embarrassments which sense entails upon the intellect, 
is to spurn her authority and renounce her guidance. Now the 
lustiest affirmation sense makes is to the unconditional validity 
of space and time, or their existence in se; and this means in- 
ferentially the integrity of nature, or the dogma of a physical 



24 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

creation. The great service, accordingly, which Swedenborg 
does the intellect is, that he refutes this sensuous dogmatizing 
by establishing the pure relativity of space and time ; so vindi- 
cating the exclusive truth of the spiritual creation. I defy 
any fair-minded person to read Swedenborg, and still preserve 
a shred of respect for the dogma of a physical creation. He 
utterly explodes the assumed basis of the dogma, by demonstrat- 
ing that space and time are contingencies of a finite or sensibly 
organized intelligence ; hence that nature, being all made up of 
space and time, has no rational, but only a sensible objectivity. 
He demonstrates, in fact, and on the contrary, that nature 
rationally regarded is the realm of pure subjectivity, having no 
other pertinency to the spiritual or objective world than the 
bodily viscera have to the body, than the shadow has to the 
substance which projects it, than darkness has to light, or death 
to life — that is, a strictly reflective pertinency. The true 
sphere of creation being thus spiritual or inward, it follows, 
according to Swedenborg, that any doctrine of nature which 
proceeds upon the assumption of her finality, or does not con- 
strue her as a mere constitutional means to a superior creative 
end — as a mere outward echo or reverberation of the true 
creative activity in inward realms of being — is simply de- 
lirious. 

Swedenborg's doctrine then of the Divine Natural Humanity 
becomes readily intelligible, if, disowning the empire of sense, 
we consent to conceive of nature after a spiritual manner, that 
is, by reducing her from a principal to a purely accessory part 
in creation, from a magisterial to a strictly ministerial func- 
tion. There is not the least reason why I individually should 
be out of harmony with infinite goodness and truth, except the 
limitation imposed upon me by nature, in identifying me with 
my bodily organization, and so individualizing or differencing 
me from my kind. Make this limitation then the purely sub- 
jective appearance which it truly is, in place of the objective 
reality which it truly is not, — make it a fact of my natural 
constitution, and not of my spiritual creation, a fact of my 
phenomenal consciousness merely, and not of the absolute 
and infinite being I have in God, — and you at once bring 
me individually into harmony with God's perfection. Our 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOKG. 25 

discordance was never internal or spiritual, was never at best 
anything but phenomenal, outward, moral, owing to my igno- 
rance of the laws of creation, or my sensible inexperience of 
the spiritual world, of which nevertheless I am all the while a 
virtual denizen. Take away then this fallacious semblance of 
the truth operated by sense, and we relieve ourselves of the 
sole impediment which exists to the intellectual approximation 
and equalization of creator and creature, of infinite and finite, 
and so are prepared to discern their essential and inviolable 
unity. 

Thus the supreme obligation we owe to Philosophy is to drop 
nature out of sight as a real or rational quantity intervening 
between creator and creature, and hiding them from each other's 
regard, and to conceive of her only as an actuality to sense, 
operating a quasi separation between them, with a view exclu- 
sively to propitiate and emphasize their real unity. In a word, 
we are bound no longer to conceive of nature as she appears 
to sense, i. e. as utterly independent or unqualified by subjec- 
tion to man ; but only as she discloses herself to the reason, 
that is, as rigidly relative to the human soul, and altogether 
qualified or characterized by the uses she promotes to our spirit- 
ual evolution. 



IV. 

Certainly we have no right after this to attribute to Swe- 
denborg an obscure or mystical conception of nature. Nature 
bears the same servile relation to the spiritual creation that a 
man's body bears to his soul, that the material of a house bears 
to the house itself, or that the substance of a statue bears to its 
form, namely, a merely quantifying, by no means a qualifying, 
relation. It fills out the spiritual creation, substantiates it, 
gives it subjective anchorage, fixity, or identification, incorpo- 
rates it, in a word, just as the marble incorporates the statue. 
For the statue is primarily an ideal form, affiliating itself to 
the artist's genius exclusively, and is only derivatively thence 
a material existence. So I primarily am a spiritual form, that 
is to say, a form of affection and thought, directly affiliated to 
the creative love and wisdom; and what my body does is 



26 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

merely to fill out this form, substantiate it, define it to itself, 
give it consciousness, allow it to say me, mine, thee, thine. 
What my body then does for my spirit specifically, nature does 
for the universe of the human mind, or the entire spiritual 
world; namely, it incorporates it, defines it to itself, gives it 
phenomenal projection from the creator, and so qualifies it to 
appreciate and cultivate an absolute conjunction with him. 
My body reveals my soul — i. e. reveals the spiritual being I 
have in God — to my own rude and blunt intelligence ; and 
the marble of the statue is an outward revelation of the beauty 
which exists ideally to the artist's brain. So nature reveals the 
spiritual universe to itself, mirrors it to its own feeble and strug- 
gling intelligence, invests it with outward or sensible lineaments, 
and, by thus finiting or imprisoning it within the bounds of 
space and time, stimulates it to react towards its proper free- 
dom or its essential infinitude in God. 

I cannot too urgently point the reader's attention to this 
masterly vindication of nature, and the part it plays in creation. 
Creation, as Swedenborg conceives it, is the marriage in unitary 
form of creator and creature. For the divine love and wisdom, 
as he reports, " cannot but be and exist in other beings or 
existences created from itself" ; and nature is the necessary 
ground of such existences, as furnishing them conscious projec- 
tion from the infinite. But let me throw together a few pas- 
sages illustrative of his general scheme of thought. 

" It is essential to love not to love itself, but others, and to 
be lovingly united with them ; it is also essential to it to be 
beloved by others, since union is thus effected. The essence of 
all love consists in union ; yea, the life of it, or all that it con- 
tains of enjoyment, pleasantness, delight, sweetness, beatitude, 
happiness, felicity. Love consists in my willing what is my 
own to be another's, and feeling his delight as my own ; this it 
is to love. But for a man to enjoy his own delight in another, 
in place of the other's delight in him, this is not to love ; for 
in this case he loves himself, while in the other he loves his 
neighbor. These two loves are diametrically opposed ; they both 
indeed are capable of producing union, though the union which 
self-love produces is only an apparent or outward union, while 
really or inwardly it is disunion. For in proportion as any 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 27 

one loves another for selfish ends, he afterwards comes to hate 
him. How can any man of understanding help perceiving 
this ? What sort of love is it for a man to love himself only, 
and not another than himself, by whom he is beloved again ? 
Clearly no union, but only disunion, results from such love ; for 
union in love supposes reciprocation, and reciprocation does 
not exist in self alone. Now when this is true of all love, it 
cannot but be infinitely true of the creative love ; so that we 
may conclude that the divine love cannot help being and existing 
in others whom it loves and by whom it is beloved. It is not pos- 
sible, of course, that God can love and be beloved by others 
who are themselves infinite or divine ; because then he would 
love himself, for the infinite or divine is one. If this infinitude 
or divinity adhered in others, it would be itself, and God would 
consequently be self-love, whereof not the least is practicable 
to him, because it is totally contrary to his essence.^* " In the 
created universe nothing lives but God- Man alone, or the lord ; 
and nothing moves but by life from him ; and nothing exists 
but by the sun from him : thus it is a truth that in God we live 
and move and have our being." f " Creation means, what is 
divine from inmost to outmost, or from beginning to end. For 
everything which is from the divine begins from himself, and 
proceeds in an orderly manner even to the ultimate end, thus 
through the heavens into the world, and there rests as in its ulti- 
mate, for the ultimate of divine order is cosmical nature." £ 

Thus in all true creation the creator is bound, by the fact of 
his giving absolute being to the creature, to communicate him- 
self — make himself over — without stint to the creature; and 
the creature, in his turn, because he gives phenomenal form or 
manifestation to the creative power, is bound to absorb the 
creator in himself, to appropriate him as it were to himself, to 
reproduce his infinite or stainless love in all manner of finite 
egotistic form ; so that the more truly the creator alone is, the 
more truly the creature alone appears. Now in this inevitable 
immersion which creation implies of creative being in created 
form, we have, according to Swedenborg, the origin of nature. 
It grows necessarily out of the obligation the creature is under 



* Divine Love and "Wisdom, 47 -49. t Ibid., 301. 

t Arcana Celestia, 10, 634. 



28 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

by creation to appropriate the creator, or reproduce him in his 
own finite lineaments. It overtly consecrates the covert mar- 
riage of infinite and finite, creator and creature. By the hy- 
pothesis of creation the creator gives sole and absolute being to 
the creature ; and unless therefore the creature reverberate the 
communication, or react towards the creator, the latter will inev- 
itably swallow him up, or extinguish the faintest possibility of 
self-consciousness in him. And the only logical reverberation of 
being is form or appearance. Being is extensive ; form is inten- 
sive. Being expropriates itself to whatsoever is not itself; form 
impropriates whatsoever is not itself to itself. Thus in the hi- 
erarchical marriage of creator and creature which we call creation, 
the creator yields the creature the primary place by spontane- 
ously assuming himself a secondary or servile one ; gives him 
absolute or objective being, in fact, only by stooping himself to 
the limitations of the created form. Reciprocity is the very 
essence of marriage. Action and reaction must be equal between 
the factors, or the marriage unity is of its own nature void. 
If, accordingly, the creator contribute the element of pure being 
— the absolute or objective element — to creation, the creature 
must needs contribute the element of pure form or appearance, 
its phenomenal or subjective element ; for being and form are 
indissolubly one. 

It is a necessary implication, then, of the truth of the Divine 
Natural Humanity, that while the creator gives invisible 
spiritual being to the creature, the creature in his turn gives 
natural form — gives visible existence — to the creator; or, 
more briefly, while the creator gives reality to the creature, the 
creature gives phenomenality to the creator. In other words 
still, we may say, that while the creator supplies the essential 
or properly creative element in creation, the creature supplies 
its existential or properly constitutive element — that element 
of hold-back or resistance without which it could never put 
on manifestation. Nature is the attestation of this ceaseless 
give-and-take between creator and creature ; the nuptial ring 
that confirms and consecrates the deathless espousals of infinite 
and finite. In spite, therefore, of its fertile and domineering 
actuality to sense, it is as void of all reality to reason as the 
shadow of one's person in a glass. It is, in fact, only the out- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 29 

ward image or shadow of itself which is cast by the inward or 
spiritual world upon the mirror of our rudimentary intelligence. 
And inasmuch as the shadow or subjective image of itself 
which any object projects of necessity reproduces the object in 
inverse form, so nature, being the subjective image or shadow 
of God's objective and spiritual creation, turns out a sheer in- 
version of spiritual order ; exhibits the creator's fulness veiled 
by the creature's want, the creator's perfection obscured, or 
negatively revealed, by the creature's imperfection. Spiritual 
or creative order affirms the essential unity of every creature 
with every other, and of all with the creator. Natural or 
created order must consequently exhibit the contingent or phe- 
nomenal oppugnancy of every creature with every other, and 
of all with the creator ; or else furnish no adequate foothold or 
flooring to the spiritual world. 

Nature is thus, according to Swedenborg, an inevitable impli- 
cation of the spiritual world, just as substance is inevitably 
implied in form, i. e. as serving to give it selfhood or identity. 
This is her sole function, to confer consciousness upon exist- 
ence, or give it fixity, by denying it individuality or affirming 
its community with all other existence. Nature identifies ex- 
istence or gives it finiteness, while spirit alone individualizes it 
or gives it infinitude. In truth, nature is a pure spiritual ap- 
parition, having no reality to the soul, but only to the senses. 
It exists only to a sensibly organized and therefore limited 
intelligence ; and hence, however absolute it appears, it is really 
all the while nothing whatever but a ratio or mean between a 
finite and an infinite mind. "We as creatures, that is, as finite 
by constitution, can have, of course, no intuitive, but only a 
rational discernment of infinite or uncreated things. We 
cannot know divine goodness and truth in a direct or pre- 
sentative way, but only in an indirect or representative one, 
that is, only in so far as they abase themselves to our natural 
level, or accommodate themselves to our nascent sensuous 
understanding. And nature is the proper theatre of this stu- 
pendous divine abasement and accommodation — of this need- 
ful obscuration, or veiling-over, of the divine splendor, in order 
to adapt it to our gross carnal vision. Throughout her total 
length and breadth, accordingly, she is a mere correspondence 



30 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

or imagery of what is going on in living or spiritual realms ; 
but a correspondence or imagery which is vital nevertheless to 
our apprehension of creative order. For the very fact of our 
creatureship insures that we should have remained forever in- 
cognizant of the creator, and antipathetic to his perfection, 
unless he, by condescending to our limitations, or reproducing 
himself within the intelligible compass of our own nature and 
history, had gradually emancipated our intelligence, and edu- 
cated us into living sympathy with his name. 

Such, concisely stated, are the leading axioms of Sweden- 
borg's ontology. Creation, spiritually regarded, is the living 
equation of creator and creature. But in order to the latter's 
attaining to the vital fellowship of the former, he must put 
on conscious or phenomenal form, must become clearly self- 
pronounced, that so being made aware, on the one hand, of his 
own essential and inveterate limitations, he may become quali- 
fied, on the other, to react spiritually towards the creator's 
infinitude. In other words, creation implies a strictly subordi- 
nate or incidental realm, a realm of preliminary formation, as 
we may say, in which the creature comes to self-consciousness, 
or the conception of himself as a being essentially distinct from, 
and antagonistic to, his creator. The logic of the case is in- 
exorable. If creation at its culmination be an exact practical 
equation of creator and creature, the minus of the latter being 
rigidly equivalent to the plus of the former, then it incorporates 
as its needful basis a sphere of experience on the creature's 
part, in which he may feel himself utterly remote from the 
creator, and abandoned to his own resources ; an empirical 
sphere of existence, in fine, which may unmistakably identify 
him with all lower things, and so alienate him from (i. e. make 
him consciously another than') his creator. Thus creation with 
Swedenborg, being at its apogee a rigid equation of the crea- 
tor's perfection and the creature's imperfection, necessitates a 
natural history, or provisional plane of projection upon which 
the equation may be wrought out to its most definite issues. 
Creator and creature are terms of an inseparable correlation, 
so that we can no more imagine a creation to which the one 
does not furnish its causative element, the other its constitutive 
element, than we can imagine a child in which father and 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 31 

mother are not coequal factors, the one conferring life or soul, 
the other existence or body. No doubt their relation is a 
strictly conjugal one, proceeding upon a hierarchical distribu- 
tion of the factors ; one being head, the other hand ; one being 
object, the other subject ; one ruling, the other obeying. But 
their unity is all the more and none the less assured on this 
account ; for notoriously the truest objective harmony is that 
which reconciles the intensest subjective diversity. 

To sum up all that has been said,, creation, with Swedenborg, 
challenges a subject earth, no less than an all-encompassing 
heaven ; a natural constitution or body, no less than a spiritual 
cause or soul ; an experimental or educative sphere for the 
creature, no less than an absolute one for the creator ; a realm 
of phenomenal freedom or finite reaction on the part of the 
former, no less than one of real force or infinite action on the 
part of the latter. In a word, creation means, to Swedenborg, 
the creature's spiritual evolution in complete harmony with his 
creator's perfection ; but if this be true, and certainly philos- 
ophy tolerates no lower conception, then obviously creation 
demands for its own actuality the natural involution of the 
creator, or his complete unresisting immersion in finite con- 
ditions. Which is only saying in other words, that creation 
— being a spiritual achievement of creative power within the 
limits of the created consciousness — involves to the creature's 
experience a rigidly natural generation and growth, with root 
and stem and flower all complete. 



V. 

We have now elucidated the logical grounds of the law by 
which alone, according to Swedenborg, creation becomes possible 
or conceivable, — the law of the creature's finite constitution, as it 
may be called, or of his apparent life in himself, in order to his 
finding real life in God, that is to say, the law of his phenome- 
nal or subjective disjunction with the creator in the interest of 
their real and objective conjunction. The creator, as we have 
seen, is bound, in the interest of the creature's immortal spiritual 
being, to endow him with natural or subjective seeming, since 
otherwise he would remain destitute of selfhood or identity. Such 



32 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

is the creative law. The creature nrast at least seem to live of 
himself — must at least feel himself to be absolute or uncondi- 
tioned in all the range of his natural appetites and passions, in all 
the breadth of his constitutional affections and thoughts — or 
else remain utterly void of that natural imagery of God, upon 
which all the possibilities of their subsequent spiritual sympathy 
and communion are contingent. It is clear that I must exist to 
my own consciousness, before I can act or function even ani- 
mally ; a fortiori, therefore, before I can function morally or as 
a man, i. e. before I can make that appropriation to myself of 
good and evil, upon which my conscience towards God, and all 
the results of such conscience to my spiritual individuality or 
character, are suspended. And what is a necessity for one 
man is a necessity for all. 

But now let us prepare to scrutinize the exact method of 
this grand creative operation as reflected in the facts of conscious- 
ness, in order that we may cease to think of creation as a volun- 
tary or capricious exertion of irresponsible power, and learn to 
conceive of it only as an orderly going forth of infinite love and 
wisdom in all the forms of human nature. For this and nothing 
less than this it is. Creation, by Swedenborg's showing, is not 
that frivolous, irrational event in space and time which men have 
hitherto deemed it ; is not that -mere arbitrary and ostentatious 
parade of the divine power which superstition delights in making 
it appear. It is, on the contrary, in its largest sense, a sincere 
and stupendous work of redemption wrought by God within the 
limits of human nature, by which it becomes gradually freed from 
its inherent corruption and death, and progressively invested 
with God's own infinity and eternity. Thus low or material con- 
ceptions of creation in the abstract will be fatal to our understand- 
ing of Swedenborg's cosmologic doctrine, and the reader will bear 
with me if I attempt to mark out the true boundaries of thought 
in this direction, or put him on his guard against permitting his 
imagination to run away with his reason in estimating the creative 
method — the method in which the creator utterly abases 
himself to the lowest level of the creature's egotism and cupidity, 
in order that he may gradually lift the latter to the otherwise 
impracticable heights of his own perfection. 

There could be no difficulty in rightly estimating the prob- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 33 

lem of creation — it would be perfectly easy, in other words, to 
regard it as a strictly rational or orderly achievement of di- 
vine power — if it were not for the grossly material aspect 
which it is the habit of the sensuous imagination to impose upon 
the relation of creator and creature. Imagination, enlightened 
only by sense, reports an insuperable distance or disagreement 
between infinite and finite, perfect and imperfect, between that 
which essentially is and that which essentially is not. " How 
shall that," we incessantly demand of our owlish wisdom, 
" how shall that which alone really is make that which really is 
not actually to be ? " It has been the standing puzzle of phi- 
losophy, since the world began, to ascertain how creation becomes 
possible or even conceivable on the hypothesis of the creator 
remaining always infinite, the creature always finite. And 
the puzzle was a reasonably honest one, so long as science was 
incompetent to disclose the true and altogether ministerial or 
subordinate part that nature plays in the drama of creation — the 
part of a handmaid, not of a heroine. But it is no longer hon- 
est on the part of our philosophic guides to keep up this mysti- 
fication, and palm off their own wilful imbecility upon the 
simple as a necessity of the intellect itself, when we have in 
Swedenborg's doctrine of God's natural humanity a sufficing 
solution of this grand philosophic mystery, a perfect key to the 
riddle of creation. The honest desideratum of philosophy — 
although philosophy has not always been intelligently conscious 
of her desideria — was to discover some point of contact between 
infinite and finite, some middle or undefined territory which 
should effectively neutralize their envenomed hostility, by 
blending what really is and what really is not in the bosom of 
its own actual unity. And Swedenborg, as we have seen, has 
fully supplied this desideratum to philosophy, in his doctrine 
of the God-Man, or Divine Natural Humanity — a doctrine 
which for the first time sheds upon nature the light of a higher 
day, and lifts it out of the vulgar bone of contention it has 
hitherto been to the fanatic on one hand and the sceptic on 
the other, into a superb majestic hieroglyph of the spiritual 
creation, into a frank and luminous mirror of the spotless 
ineffable marriage which in invisible depths of being forever 
unites the divine and human natures. 

3 



34 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

Nature, according to Swedenborg, is all that exists, or appears 
to be. Its very being is form or appearance ; its total esse is 
existere ; that is to say, nature is what neither really is nor 
really is not, being in truth an actual marriage of the two 
which makes what really is appear as if it were not, and what 
really is not appear as if it were.* We may say, then, that 
nature is the realm neither of being (i. e. love) nor of not 
being (i. e. self), but all simply of existence (i. e. self-love), 
which blends these two factors in the unity of a conscious sub- 
ject. For love (being) is of its own nature infinitely objective ; 
that is to say, it tends to exist or go forth from itself to whatso- 
ever is not itself, to whatsoever indeed is most opposed to 
itself; and it can only so exist or go forth of course in subjective 
or created form, in which it may dwell as in itself and com- 
municate its infinite blessedness. And self (not-being) is of its 
own nature infinitely subjective, that is, tends to be, tends to 
stay within itself, and subjugate to itself whatsoever is not itself, 
— whatsoever is in the least degree opposed to itself; and it 
can only thus be of course, by appropriating objective or creative 
substance which freely lends itself to its embraces, and ministers 
unreservedly to its lusts. There is no rational escape, as it 
appears to me, from Swedenborg's disclosures on this subject. 
Love of its own nature, of its own fulness or perfection, tends 
to create, i. e. tends not to be in itself, but only in forms cre- 
ated from itself to which it may thus communicate its own eter- 
nal felicities. It tends to forget itself, to abandon itself, to 
lose or merge itself in whatsoever is not love, but self; just 
as self, in its turn, becoming thus incited or vivified, tends of 
its proper nature, of its proper want or imperfection, to be loved 
infinitely, i. e. tends to seek itself and find itself in whatsoever 
is not itself, namely, infinite love. And this reciprocal tendency 
of love to be finited by not-love or self, and of self to be infinited 
by not-self or love, results logically in the universe of creation 
which we call nature. 

* If indeed " to exist " or " appear to be " were equivalent to really " being," 
we might call nature, not so much a marriage of what really is to what really is 
not, as a compromise of the former in the latter's behalf, whereby the one abdicates 
being to the same extent as the other claims it. But this is absurd, for to exist or 
to appear to be is not really or absolutely to be, but only to be relatively to some- 
thing else ; and the creator can endow the creature with any latitude and longitude 
of being in this sense, without the slightest compromise of his infinity. 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 35 

Nature accordingly proclaims itself beyond all question that 
indispensable tertium quid of which, whether consciously or 
not the philosopher has always been in search : that needful 
middle-term or neutral ground between being and not-being, 
wherein what really is is seen giving subjective being to what 
is not ; and what really is not is seen in its turn giving objective 
existence to what is. 

Nature is thus a purely subjective work of God, an actual 
going forth of creative love by every method of formative wis- 
dom into every variety of creaturely manifestation or conscious- 
ness. It is not the' objective or spiritual creation, but only the 
shadow of itself which that creation necessarily projects upon a 
carnal or sensibly organized intelligence ; and it is a sheer in- 
tellectual insanity to regard it in any higher light. The lion 
and the lamb, for example, both exist in nature, but has either 
lion or lamb the least title to be esteemed the objective or spir- 
itual creature of God ? What nonsense to think of such a 
thing ! If then the lion and the lamb, the serpent and the 
dove, the leopard and the kid, the bear and the calf, naturally 
exist or appear to be to my intelligence, what is the inference ? 
Not that such things spiritually exist or have absolute being in 
God, but that they pertain exclusively to the created conscious- 
ness, having no other function than outwardly to image or rep- 
resent the things of human affection and thought, which alone 
make up the spiritual creation, or are alone objective to the di- 
vine mind. Our true or spiritual and objective consciousness is 
conditioned upon our phenomenal or bodily and subjective exist- 
ence, so that we are incapable of apprehending interior and spir- 
itual verities save as they image themselves to us in sensible 
forms. None of these sensible things really or spiritually are 
and exist ; for really or spiritually God alone is, and man alone 
really or spiritually exists from him. But they necessarily exist or 
appear to our finite consciousness, to our sensuous intelligence. 
Why necessarily ? Because otherwise that intelligence or con- 
sciousness would be without form and void of substance. My 
sensibility and intelligence, my feeling and knowledge, are by 
no means absolute possessions of mine ; they do not belong to 
me as personally dissociated with nature, and independent of her 
resources, but only as I am intimately one with her, only as I 



36 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

partake her life, or am in organized contact with external things. 
They are not faculties which inhere in me objectively regarded, 
or as unconditioned upon nature, but only as subjectively regarded, 
that is, as rigidly conditioned upon mineral, vegetable, and ani- 
mal existence, and dependent upon it as the child is dependent 
upon the mother's womb. Within the whole range of my sub- 
jective feeling and knowledge I never for an instant stand aloof 
from nature or outside of it, looking down upon it, that is to 
say, I am never in the least objective to it. On the contrary, 
I invariably stand under it, or inside of it ; I am in fact rigidly 
shut up or included in it, and yearn towards its instruction 
as devoutly as the child yearns towards its mother's breasts. 
In short, nature, so far as my feeling and knowledge are con- 
cerned, is wholly and intensely objective to me, shaping my sub- 
jectivity or giving it lavish body just as the mother shapes the 
fruit of her womb, and builds it up or fills it out with her own 
ungrudging substance. 

Thus by creation I am in myself, in my own right, a helpless 
subject of nature, being dependent upon her stringent objectivity 
for all that I feel and know, for all that I consciously am and 
enjoy. If accordingly nature did not exist or appear to me in 
all her sensibly contrasted forms of light and dark, hot and cold, 
high and low, hard and soft, rough and smooth, great and small, 
strong and weak, beautiful and ugly, artless and cunning, inno- 
cent and noxious, pleasant and painful, my animal sensibility 
would afford no anchorage to my moral instincts, or those ra- 
tional intuitions of good and evil in human character, upon 
which all my subsequent knowledges of spiritual, celestial, and 
divine things are of necessity to be moulded. If I had had no 
sensible observation of the difference between serpent and dove, 
fox and sheep, wolf and lamb, I should lack all basis of dis- 
crimination in regard to my own rational or moral attributes ; 
all ground for my subsequent recognition of myself as a moral 
agent, or for that discrimination of men into good and evil, 
true and false, wise and simple, by which our conception of 
moral existence or human unity is generated. If my senses 
did not familiarize me with the treachery of the serpent na- 
ture and the innocence of the dove nature — if, in short, my 
sensible experience did not furnish my rational understanding 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOEG. 37 

with a complete livery or symbolism of abstract human nature, 
with an infinitely modulated key wherewith to unlock all the 
secret chambers of the human heart, all the infinite possibilities 
of character among men — I should be forever destitute of mor- 
al perception, should never be able in thought to attribute good 
and evil, truth and falsity, either to myself or others ; because 
thought is impossible without language ; and language derives 
all its substance or body from things, or the contents of our sen- 
sible experience.* 

Such is Swedenborg's idea of nature, and the relation of 
strict subservience it bears to our mental development. He 
regards it as a mere though exact and copious hieroglyph of 
spiritual existence ; a living inventory, so to speak, or exquisite 
picture-language, revealing all the otherwise ineffable mysteries 
of that marriage of the divine and human natures which alone 
constitutes the spiritual creation. It is a literal record, a faithful 
correspondence to sense, of whatsoever rationally befalls the 
intercourse of infinite creator and finite creature in inward 
invisible depths of being ; so that if we once attain to an ade- 
quate doctrine of nature, or a just intellectual insight of the 
stupendous rational uses she subserves, we shall possess an in- 
fallible clew to all spiritual problems. 

In short, Swedenborg holds nature to a strict and abject 
revelation of the creative perfection, and utterly denies it all 
substantive functioning. Only, as all the life of nature culmi- 
nates in the human or moral form, so nature as a divine revela- 
tion becomes of necessity complicated with man's historic evolu- 
tion ; and it is not until history consequently has attained to its 
apogee in the advent of human society or brotherhood upon the 
earth, that nature is able at last to justify her apocalyptic pre- 
tension, and vindicate the infinite goodness, truth, and beauty 
which have always lain concealed under our native egotism, lust, 
and vanity. 

But we must not anticipate our subject. 

* Language is an instinctive manifestation of mind or spirit in nature. It is the 
instinctive effort of the human mind to reproduce itself — to realize its own sole 
unity — in the universality of nature's phenomena. 



38 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 



VI. 



It is easy to see that a reader unused to the line of thought 
here exposed may conceive it liable to a charge of pantheism. 
But it will be quite as easy to show that there is no real ground 
for such an imputation. What is the essence of pantheism ? 
It consists in making creation a direct, not a redemptive process 
of the divine power ; in making the creature continuous, as it 
were, from the creator. That is to say, it denies him the very 
boon of natural or subjective identity, upon which, according to 
Swedenborg, his spiritual or objective individuality is inevitably 
conditioned ; and so leaves his creation, in any honest sense of 
the word, as completely indeterminate or unavouched, and in- 
deed unattempted, as the generation of a child would be, which 
claimed a paternal or causative action, but disallowed a maternal 
or constitutive reaction. Thus Hegel bases his ontology upon 
the identity of being and nothing, i. e. he makes being (the 
creator) a logical evolution of not-being (the creature) : so that 
creation is no actual vivification of the created nature by the 
creator, whereby the creature's spiritual or individual conjunc- 
tion with the creator becomes assured, but is on the contraiy a 
grossly illusory appearance whereby the creator, under cover of 
a creaturely disguise, attains himself to subjective consciousness, 
and leaves his creature proportionably defrauded." He thus 
utterly falsifies, or degrades into childish make-believe, the great 
fact of a natural creation which is fundamental to Swedenborg's 
scheme of thought ; for he interprets what appears to be crea- 
tion into the so-called creator's essential incapacity to be himself, 
without a perpetual fillip from the so-called creature. He con- 
cedes, of course, a quasi reality to the creature ; but as, upon his 
theory, the creator himself is no objective but a purely subjective 
or selfish style of being, so he cannot really exist or go forth 
from himself in lower subject forms ; and the creature conse- 
quently remains void, not only of real objectivity, but of true sub- 
jectivity as well. Like all pantheists or idealists, Hegel commits 
the common but abject blunder of invariably objectifying to his 
own imagination the contents of consciousness, or what after all is 
only the subjective side of existence ; and hence regards the pre- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 39 

tension of the me as absolute and not contingent. And knowing 
but one legitimate absolute — but one real objectivity — he does 
not hesitate a moment to run all phenomenal individuality into 
that, so making the creative process to mean henceforth, not the 
orderly and fruitful marriage of the creative and created natures 
in every form of social and aesthetic action, but a peevish, snarling, 
and bewildered muddle of the two in a hopeless effort to escape 
from each other's grasp, or accomplish each other's extinction. 

No doubt if Swedenborg set out from similar intellectual data 
to these, he would not be long in reaching a similar result. But 
his intellectual principles run strikingly counter to those of 
idealism or pantheism. That is to say, the me or subjective 
element has not the slightest claim, in his hands, to the finality 
or absoluteness which superficial observers ascribe to it. He 
maintains, on the contrary, its essential contingency to a higher 
outlying objectivity, or makes its total realit}' lie in the use it 
promotes to such objectivity. He has no trouble, accordingly, 
in demonstrating the unimpeachable veracity of our natural 
consciousness, since he makes it a necessary implication of God's 
objective work in creation ; an indispensable means to an eternal 
spiritual conjunction of creator and creature, and hence itself 
instinct with infinite love and wisdom. 

And yet, though Swedenborg is no pantheist — though his 
doctrine of the Divine Natural Humanity betrays no lurking 
taint of idealism, but sturdily repugns all commingling and con- 
fusion of infinite and finite, creator and creature, in creation — 
it must be owned, as we have already intimated, that he has 
done almost nothing himself to help out the logic of the situa- 
tion, and evidently considers his duty to the reader discharged 
by simply affirming the situation itself. Nor is any one entitled, 
as I conceive, to take up the least quarrel with him on this 
score ; for his purpose in writing was not synthetic or inductive, 
but purely analytic or deductive. It was not to argue princi- 
ples, but simply to state and illustrate them by facts of experi- 
ence and observation, leaving the reader to do the needful 
argumentation for himself according to the wants of his heart 
and the measure of his understanding. And the reason of this 
reserve is palpable. For I cannot remind the reader too often 
for his own advantage, that Swedenborg was all simply a seer, 



40 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

and in no sense a dogmatist or " thinker." That is to say, the 
grand truth he reports to us — the truth of God's natural hu- 
manity — is neither a truth of sense like pleasure and pain, nor 
a truth of science like equality and difference, nor yet a truth 
of conscience like good and evil, but exclusively a truth of life 
or spiritual perception : of which therefore no one can ever 
become convinced by any amount of reasoning, but only by a 
process of the strictest inward growth or refinement. " What 
you call nature" — says Swedenborg in effect — "what you 
call nature, and suppose to be infinite in extent and eternal 
in duration, has really no existence in itself, but is a pure super- 
stition of our ignorance and folly ; all that is real about it beino- 
the providential use it promotes as such superstition to our self- 
consciousness. It has an apparent truth in itself, a truth to our 
senses, but it is void of absolute truth, being a sheer accommo- 
dation or concession of the divine love and wisdom to our spir- 
itual fatuity. If accordingly we now saw with spiritual instead 
of carnal eyes, we should no longer discern this dead immova- 
ble nature, but see in the place of it an infinite Man, instant 
creator and redeemer of all men, carnally crucified no doubt 
and buried from sight under all the hallucinations of our native 
selfishness and conceit, but spiritually resurgent and shining 
forth as a risen sun in every reality of our social or regenerate 
experience and activity." 

And how could any mere logical skill avail to make a doc- 
trine so shocking to prejudice — in fact so intellectually revolu- 
tionary — as this, acceptable to minds unprepared by livino- 
culture to receive it ? But though one may not hope to convey 
the vital truth of the doctrine to the understanding of another, 
as you would convey a mathematical formula to his memory, it 
may nevertheless be quite within one's competence to dissipate 
some of the prominent fallacies and fantasies which hinder its 
reception. And this humble function I shall now, to the best 
of my ability, endeavor to discharge. 



VII. 

Let us begin by rightly interpreting to ourselves the nature 
of the selfhood which God is said to give us, as the condition of 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 41 

our perfect spiritual fellowship with himself. That is, let us be 
sure to view it as a composite, not a simple, phenomenon ; as a strict 
fact of conscience indeed primarily, and only by inference or 
derivation thence a fact of science. We read in the book of 
Genesis that " God created man in his image ; in the image of 
God created he him; male and female created he them." Now 
the composite character here ascribed to human nature in the 
abstract — for as yet, according to the record, no concrete man 
existed upon the earth to till the ground, Adam, much more Eve, 
being still unformed — must be determined of course by what 
it is said to image, namely, the creative perfection. Man is by 
creation an image of God, and as such image he is both male 
and female. What connection is there between these two facts ? 
What justification, in other words, does the creative perfection 
afford to this alleged duality in the creature ? Swedenborg 
is full of instruction on this point to every one who has caught 
a glimpse of the profound spiritual or philosophic meaning which 
underlies the mystical letter of revelation, and I beg my reader's 
attention while I seek to reproduce it. 

The origin of all created existence, according to Swedenborg, 
as we have already seen, is infinite or perfect love : meaning by 
that, a love so essentially unlimited by selfish or prudential re- 
gards as to be spontaneously creative. An infinite or perfect 
love, by his showing, is a purely objective love, i. e. it is so 
intent upon the blessing of others as to be utterly indifferent to 
self. It is a love so essentially untainted with subjective ends 
as to find its supreme felicity in communicating itself to others 
created from itself, in whom it may be and forever abide as in 
itself. 

But obviously a love of this infinite quality implies a propor- 
tionate wisdom to carry it out. For it can never realize itself 
in action, save by vivifying the nature of the creature in a man- 
ner so absolute or thorough, as to make him seem to himself 
an unquestionable subject of nature, and lead him therefore 
instinctively to revolt at the imputation of direct creatureship. 
And what infinite skill or address is requisite to accomplish such 
a result ! What an infinite wisdom, what a stupendous order, 
must the universe of existence exhibit, in order that the creature 
of God may find himself there without a risk of mistake or mis- 



42 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

conception ; may arrive at a form of consciousness so definite 
and absolute, as to defy the faintest suspicion in his mind of the 
real truth of the case, and leave him on the contrary so compla- 
cently self-poised as to render him an eternally fit subject of 
God's spiritual indwelling ! 

Our own love, finite and imperfect as it is, illustrates, in its 
way, the hierarchical adjustment here alleged between the di- 
vine love and wisdom. Our love is practically true and perfect, 
just as its action is guided by intelligence, by a judicious esti- 
mate of the wants of those we love. I may love my friend 
with what seems to myself a pure love ; but if I am not previ- 
ously well informed in the nature of my friend and the needs 
that illustrate it, my love will go forth in very unwise acts, and 
probably do him more harm than good. Just so of the divine 
love. It would be utterly incapable of realizing itself in action, 
unless it were methodized by a proportionate wisdom, based 
upon an unflinching experimental acquaintance with the nature 
of those whom it would serve. Were it not thus methodized, 
thus schooled or guided, it would of course flow forth blindly or 
without measure, in utter indifference to any faculty of reaction 
and hence of reception on the part of its objects, and would 
consequently deluge or drown out under its merciless insane 
floods the very seeds it was intended to fertilize. The divine 
love then glorifies itself — i. e. avouches its essential perfection 
as love — by embodying itself in the lineaments of a perfect 
wisdom — a wisdom so intimately conditioned upon, or bound up 
with, the nature of those to Avhom its activity is addressed, as to 
be necessarily formative of it. 

Understand me. The nature in question is confessedly a 
created one. That is to say, it is in itself sheer and absolute 
naught, being dependent for whatsoever appearances of life it 
exhibits upon a wholly gratuitous quickening received at the 
divine hands. Practically then, or at bottom, the divine wis- 
dom is only the divine love manifesting itself in creaturely form ; 
existing or going forth in the endlessly diversified lineaments of 
the created nature ; endowing its creature with an apparently 
absolute selfhood, with a seemingly unconditioned consciousness. 
It is in fact the creative love alienating itself from itself in the 
interest of the creature's identity. Swedenborg accordingly 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 43 

always calls wisdom or truth the manifestation which the divine 
love makes of itself in creation ; the inevitable existere (going- 
forth) of the infinite uncreated esse in the nature of its own 
finite creature ; hence the middle-term, matrix, mould, or means 
by which the creative love energizes the spiritual creation, or 
brings forth results every way congruous with its own infini- 
tude. 

There is clearly no escape for the creative love from the obli- 
gation here imposed, short of renouncing its infinitude. If it 
would give itself unstintedly to the creature, if it would make 
itself over to him in the plenitude of its own resources, it must 
first of all give him subjective identity or projection from itself. 
The creature is in himself or by nature simply zero ; and if 
therefore the creative love would communicate itself with all 
its unimaginable potencies and felicities to him, it must first 
of all quicken him within all the compass of this natural destitu- 
tion of his, and so afford him a true ground of consciousness 
adequate to all the needs of his ultimate spiritual renovation, or 
reaction towards the creator. Thus our natural self-love and 
worldliness must inevitably degrade the creative wisdom to our 
own level, must infallibly impose upon it the aspect of " a man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief." But surely no blame 
can by possibility attach to us on this account, since we are not 
our own creation, but God's. On the contrary, only a higher 
glory accrues in this way to the creative name, which cheerfully 
encounters all possible opprobrium, in order that the creature 
who is unconscious of the love which thus humbles itself to his 
service may thereby at least come to self-consciousness, and in 
that acquisition possess the pledge of his eventually perfect spir- 
itual conjunction with the creator. 

All this, I repeat, is an obligation of the creative love growing 
out of its own perfection. That Jove cannot become truly op- 
erative — that is to say, it cannot realize its own majestic spir- 
itual ends — save in so far as it actually vivifies the nature of 
the creature ; and to vivify the nature of the creature means 
to quicken his absolute and essential want or finiteness in a 
manner so ungrudging, as that he may feel an instinct of life 
within him, or claim to exist by simple right of nature, as it 
were, and without any direct divine interposition. In carrying 



44 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

out this obligation the creative love undergoes of necessity the 
utmost obscuration or humiliation. For how shall it succeed in 
quickening our finite nature — in vivifying with its own un- 
stinted substance our yawning and rapacious appetites and pas- 
sions — without ipso facto assuming the responsibility of our 
natural infirmities, sufferings, and griefs, without for the time 
beino- taking upon itself the burden of all our iniquities, trans- 
gressions, and sins ? Thus it is by no means in itself that the 
creative goodness incurs humiliation, but only in us ; that is to 
say, in its manifested aspect, or as it is reproduced in created 
form, and submits to be reviled, persecuted, and crucified at the 
will of its own dependent but wholly unconscious, incredulous, 
and ungrateful offspring. In short, it experiences no humilia- 
tion in its own essential or absolute character as love or good- 
ness, but only in its existential or contingent aspect as truth, the 
truth of form or appearance it takes on in our natural vivifica- 
tion. It is humiliated in us exclusively, at the hands of our 
essential shabbiness and imperfection, our native egotism, tyran- 
ny, and lust. It is, however, a humiliation none the less real 
and necessary on that account, since our creation, or coming to 
natural consciousness, is inexorably conditioned upon it ; and 
without it we should have missed all those capacities of spiritual 
life to which that consciousness furnishes the indispensable an- 
chorage. 

We can now see our way very clearly, I think. For evi- 
dently the creative wisdom, in going forth into actual manifesta- 
tion, or descending into created form, must be above all things 
else solicitous to guarantee the integrity of the creature's con- 
sciousness, or dike out his personality against any chance leak- 
age (endosmosis) of the infinite divine substance. The crea- 
ture, regarded on his natural side, incurs no danger but from 
the creator, in whom he lives and moves and has his being, and 
who might, accordingly, if his love had the slightest subjective 
infirmity, or were in the least conceivable degree debilitated by 
a regard to self, incontinently drown him out at any moment. 
Thus the creator is bound by the interest of his own good-name, 
steadfastly to abjure every incursion into the creature's territory, 
diligently to withhold himself from all interference with the 
creature's consciousness, let its actual untried issues be what they 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 45 

will ; though they should plunge him, if need be, into the em- 
brace of death and hell. To be created means, so far as the 
creature is concerned, to attain to subjective identity, to be sep- 
arated from the infinite by becoming his own finite conscious 
self; and as nature is the exclusive medium of this creaturely 
experience, so no matter to what universality of dimensions na- 
ture enlarges us, our finite consciousness will never be enfeebled 
but only strengthened thereby, while our sensible remoteness 
from the infinite will be all the while most agreeably caressed, 
soothed, and flattered. But let the least ray of the infinite sub- 
stance penetrate the deep divine darkness of our finite con- 
sciousness — the dense divine obliviousness upon which that 
consciousness is moulded, or out of which it is fashioned — in- 
stantly the total heat and light of our life vanish, and nature, 
with all her wealth of unnumbered worlds, shrivels from sight 
like a scroll in a furnace. 

Now the armor of proof in which the creative wisdom arrays 
the created consciousness, in order to guard its integrity, is con- 
cisely hinted to our perception when we are told that " Grod 
creates man male and female' 1 '' : the male in this collocation being 
the grand cosmical or unconscious man designated by the latin 
word homo, and embracing the entire realm of physics from the 
lowest mineral up to the highest animal form of existence ; and 
the female being the petty domestic or conscious man, desig- 
nated by the latin word vir, and embracing the entire realm of 
our free and normal historic evolution.* For by this concise 
statement is signified that the creator endows his creature with 
an essentially finite genesis, or suspends his self-consciousness 
upon a strict equilibrium between the element of identity or 
universality in his nature, and that of difference or individual- 
ity ; between the element of force or necessity, and that of free- 
dom or contingency; between the interests of the broadest 
humanity in short and those of the narrowest conventional vir- 
tue. And surely nothing can so effectually separate creature 
from creator as his subjection .to this finite experience. For in 

* It is the identical contrast which is expressed by the antagonism of Nature and 
History, and by the terms " physical or organic " and " moral or voluntary " life, 
applied to man. The same contrast enlivens the graduated meaning we attach to 
the phrases a humane and a virtuous man. 



46 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBOEG. 

the creator love and wisdom, heart and head, force and freedom, 
justice and mercy, universality and individuality, are one and 
inseparable, and it is only in the creature that the two principles 
are found in envenomed mutual hostility, being held both alike 
in rigid abeyance to that purely empirical reconciliation with 
each other, which is signified by the social destiny of the race. 

Here then, at last, we have it. To be created male and 
female is to have a finite genesis, is to be conscious of one's self 
as the neutrality or indifference of two forces as wide apart as 
zenith and nadir, or heaven and hell. And to have a finite gen- 
esis is to be only an image of God, and consequently to stand in 
subjective antagonism to him, as the image necessarily stands in 
subjective antagonism to its original. Man is the image of God 
only as finitely constituted, i. e. when the fire of self-love in 
his nature disputes the sway of universal love ; and this is to be 
completely undivine, is to be the exact logical opposite of God. 
The image of God is a projection of the divine personality or 
character on some foreign substance. It is not God, but only 
what God appears to be in a form of opposition to himself, i. e. 
in created form. It is by no means what he is in himself; on 
the contrary, it is precisely what he is not in himself, but exclu- 
sively in others created from himself. To be God is to be essen- 
tially infinite, i. e. it is to be love without any alloy of self; a 
love that invariably loses itself in its object. To be an image 
of God, on the other hand, is to be essentially finite, i. e. it is 
to be love upon a basis or background of self; it is to be self- 
love in fact, a love that invariably seeks itself in its object. My 
love is organic, therefore passionate or coerced, leading me to 
subjugate all that is objective to me to the compass of my own 
subjectivity. The divine love is inorganic, and therefore free or 
unimpassioned, tending evermore to the enfranchisement of its 
proper objects from itself, or the investing them with their oavii in- 
alienable subjectivity. In a word, the one love is altogether ac- 
tive or creative, the other altogether passive or reactive. And 
the whole problem of creation being to find a wall of partition be- 
tween infinite creator and finite creature which shall be practically 
impervious or inviolable, nothing offers so clean and complete a 
solution of the problem as to find the created consciousness itself 
constituting that wall : the creature confessing himself no direct 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 47 

or living presentation of the divine perfection, but only and at 
best an indirect or negative re-presentation of it ; only and at 
best an inverse subjective form and dead image of it. 



VIII. 

And now let us sum up all that has gone before, in prepara- 
tion for what remains behind. 

Man is the true creature of God, the creation of a really infi- 
nite love and wisdom. But the creature of God, regarded in 
himself or subjectively, must either be nothing — in which case 
creation, in any honest sense of the word, is impossible, being 
swallowed up of a remorseless idealism — or else he must be the 
total and exact opposite of his creator. For it is contrary to 
the creative perfection to conceive any existence as possible, 
which in itself or subjectively simulates that perfection. 

Do I mean then to say that the creature of an infinite power 
is shut up to an eternal subjective antagonism with his creator ? 
Unquestionably, if that subjectivity be a purely natural one or 
end with itself; that is to say, unless his nature undergo some 
modification at the creative hands, by lending itself to his 
subsequent spiritual redemption. The strict logic of the case 
forbids any other conclusion, under penalty of vitiating the in- 
tegrity of creation. If any two notions are radically opposed 
on their subjective side, it is those of creator and creature. Ob- 
jectively, or in creation, creator and creature are one and undis- 
tinguishable. But in their subjective aspect nothing can be so 
intensely antagonistic to the conception of a creator as that of 
a creature. To create is one thing, to be created is the total 
and exact opposite of that thing. For what is one's nature as a 
creature ? It is abject want or destitution. To be created is to 
be void of all things in one's self, and to possess them only in an- 
other ; and if I am the creature accordingly of an infinite cre- 
ator, my want of course must be infinite. The nature of a thing 
is what the thing is in itself, and apart from foreign interference. 
And evidently what the creature is in himself and apart from 
the creator is sheer nothingness, that is to say, sheer want or 
destitution, destitution of all things, whether of life, of existence, 
or even of being. So that to give the creature natural form or 



48 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

selfhood, is merely to vivify the infinite void he is in himself; 
is merely to organize in living form the universal destitution he 
is under with respect to the creative fulness. 

I attempt no apology, accordingly, for Swedenborg's doctrine 
on this subject, but applaud it with all my heart. I perfectly 
agree with him that redemption and not creation avouches the 
proper glory of the divine name. Creation is not, and cannot 
be, the final word of the divine dealings with us. It has at 
most a rigidly subjective efficacy as affording us self-conscious- 
ness, and not the least objective value as affording us any spir- 
itual fellowship of the divine perfection. To be naturally created 
indeed — to be created an image of God — is to be anything ex- 
cept a spiritual likeness of him. The law of the image is sub- 
jectively to invert the lineaments of its original, or reflect them 
in so negative a form as that the original shall be wholly lost 
sight of in itself and the image alone appear ; all that is light in 
the one being dark in the other, and vice versa. And to be 
spiritually like God is inwardly to undo this subjective inversion 
of the divine perfection to which we find ourselves naturally 
born or created, and put on that direct or objective presentation 
of it to which we are historically re-born or re-created. The 
difference between the two states is the exact difference between 
bondage and freedom, between being a servant and being a son. 
So that if our natural creation were not strictly subservient to 
something infinitely superior to itself, we should remain forever 
at a hopeless though unsuspected spiritual remove from God. 

Creation necessarily, as we have seen, zWolves the creator 
and obscures his perfection, in the exact ratio of its evolving the 
creature and illustrating his imperfection. Unless therefore the 
creature himself reproduce the creative infinitude concealed in 
his nature, it must be forever obliterated from remembrance. 
The bare fact of his creation stamps him in himself, or on his 
subjective side, the utter uncompromising enemy of his creator ; 
and unless he can in some way react upon himself, or rise above 
his natural level, the level of his proper subjectivity, that enmity 
must remain forever unappeased. And this capacity of reaction 
in the creature is precisely what his natural division into male 
and female provides for, in rendering him both objective and 
subjective to himself; in permitting him to be in himself both 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 49 

the proper object and the proper subject of his own activity. 
The creative love as we have seen, the love of creator to creature, 
is essentially infinite, as being without any taint or drawback of 
self-love. And the created love, the love of creature to creator, 
is essentially finite, being a pure love of self, untinged by any 
love to the neighbor. If then the creative wisdom can inwardly 
so attemper the created nature, as gradually to bend this subjec- 
tive love of the creature, or supreme regard for himself, into an 
objective love or supreme regard for society, the creature will, 
ipso facto, become unclad of his native corruption, and clothed 
upon with his creator's health. And it is, I repeat, exclusively 
to provide for this great contingency that the creature is created 
both male and female ; that is to say, both organic and func- 
tional, static and dynamic, generic and specific, physical and 
moral, cosmical and domestic, universal and particular, public 
and private, outward and inward, common and proper, objective 
and subjective. For the reciprocal opposition of these elements 
is so great as to leave them finally no choice but marriage ; 
that is, such a hierarchical adjustment of their conflicting claims 
as may render them freely prolific, or forever fuse them in the 
unity of a new nature. This spontaneous marriage of man as 
man with woman as woman — or, what is the same thing, of 
the objective and subjective, or physical and moral, contents of 
human nature — is what is meant by society, which is the con- 
summation of human destiny. This marriage is prolific of an 
entirely new self-consciousness in man ; amounts, in fact, to that 
new creation of God for which the dumb earth has so long 
groaned and been in inward unintelligent travail ; that divine 
resurrection in our flesh which will ally us no longer negatively 
or inversely, but positively and directly, with infinite power, 
peace, and innocence. 

What is legitimately meant by the selfhood or subjectivity 
which God is said to give us ought now to be clear. No sensible or 
material thing is meant, no outward and visible quantity what- 
ever, but solely a fact of inward life or consciousness due to the 
essential marriage which exists in creation between creator and 
creature. We mean by it that inward sense of freedom and 
rationality which we enjoy as men by virtue of God's unstinted 
indwelling in our nature, and without which we should soon 



50 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

forfeit every vestige of the human form. Selfhood, personality, 
is not anything which you can sensibly discern, or reduce to 
mathematical measurement, for it is a fact of life or conscious- 
ness exclusively, and the mathematics deal only with facts of 
existence or sense. Nothing in the least explains it short of the 
creative truth, the truth of the divine natural humanity, which 
teaches us that what God creates is no mere pictured or sculptured 
reality, like the works we glory in ; nor yet any mechanism, 
like the clocks and steam-engines which exercise our maturer 
genius ; but a purely living or conscious form, which freely or 
of its own nature reacts to his inspiration, and reproduces in 
negative or inverse imagery every feature of his perfection. No 
doubt the creature, taught by his senses, denies this great truth, 
or separates himself to his own thought in a very vital manner 
from the creator. But all this is a childish illusion on the crea- 
ture's part, due to his native ignorance and imbecility in spir- 
itual things ; the real truth of the case being all the while, that 
when he feels himself to be most absolute and independent, he 
is then precisely the most abject puppet or dependent creature 
of the creative wisdom. 

This fact that the creature, by virtue of his native arrogance 
and stupidity in divine things, inflates himself to absolute dimen- 
sions, ought not to challenge the serious intellectual homage 
which philosophers are wont to accord it. In fact, philosophy 
has been fed hitherto upon excrementitious food. Men have 
always and everywhere so persistently defiled their infantile 
simplicity and innocence, in eating of the tree of finite knowl- 
edge, as really to fancy themselves the source of their own 
good and evil, and hence to exhibit states of alternate elation 
and despair towards God, which reflect the gravest discredit 
upon his stainless name. And what could philosophy do, having 
no higher testimony to appeal to, and disdaining the light of 
revelation, but accept this garbage of the moral or subjective 
consciousness as final or absolute, and proceed to live upon it 
as upon so much celestial manna ? But the data of the moral 
consciousness are a ghastly mockery of celestial truth. The 
angel, according to Swedenborg, is so far from cherishing his 
moral consciousness, or attributing the good and evil he is made 
aware of in his own bosom to himself, that he habitually refers 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 51 

the former to the lord, and the latter to evil association. He 
is invariably described by Swedenborg as being utterly unwill- 
ing to appropriate to himself the least particle of good or of 
evil ; because he finds that just in proportion as he does so he 
forfeits his inmost essential peace and beatitude. He is un- 
feignedly averse to claiming any selfhood or personality of his 
own ; unfeignedly averse to credit himself with the least sub- 
jective discrimination from the most wanton imp of satan. For 
the heavenly atmospheres, as Swedenborg reports them, are so 
instinct with objective use, are so inspiriting to every form of 
productive action, that every one who respires them becomes 
liberated from his finite ties, and actively associated with the 
infinite power and loveliness. And how shall minds thus en- 
larged by contact with the real substances of the world dimin- 
ish themselves again to the purely figurative and fallacious 
dimensions of the moral or subjective consciousness ? Do men 
who have known at last what life truly is relish it so little as 
to revert deliberately to death ? 

Bear diligently in mind, then, that our natural creation is a 
purely spiritual operation of God, and that space and time, which 
to our silly thought seem so essential to it, are, on the contrary, 
sheerly existential to it, as abasing it to the level of our sensu- 
ous cognizance. They have nothing whatever to do with our 
creation in the way of involution, but only in that of the most 
reverent and obedient evolution. It involves them as the ex- 
pressive symbols, as the patient pliant vassals, of human affec- 
tion and thought ; while they, in their turn, assiduously evolve 
it, as having no primary pertinence to themselves, but only to 
the sovereign form of man. Thus our natural creation, truly or 
spiritually regarded, claims the dew of eternal youth. It is as 
fresh and vigorous now, at this day and in this land, as it ever 
was in the. virgin heart of Eden, under suns whose heat and 
light have been myriads of years extinct. 



IX. 

I do not see how the least doubt of my meaning can now 
survive, when I talk of God's giving us natural selfhood or sub- 
jective identity. For it is plain, that I mean to allege no out- 



52 THE SECKET OF SWEDENBORG. 

ward and finite, but an inward and infinite, giving on his part ; 
in fact, just that complete surrender of himself to us, in the 
plenitude of his perfection, which constitutes our natural creation, 
or is equivalent to our being vivified by him in all the height and 
depth, and length and breadth, of our native oppugnancy to him. 
This is the only true or philosophic conception of creation, 
namely, the abandonment of yourself to what is not yourself 
in a manner so intimate and hearty, as that you thenceforth 
shall utterly disappear within the precincts of its existence — 
shall become phenomenally extinct within the entire realm of its 
personality — while it alone shall appear to be. For example, 
you are sometimes said, in popular parlance, to create the prod- 
ucts of your genius, say a statue. Now your creative action 
here restricts itself to the ideal form of the statue, its material 
substance being already supplied to your hand in nature. Ac- 
cordingly, just in proportion as your statue is faultless in point 
of art — which means, just as its opus subjugates its materies, 
just as its base earthly substance becomes indissolubly wedded 
with, or glorified into, ideal form — will your creative power 
avouch itself, and the perfect work swallow up the personality 
of the workman. Just so with the divine creation. It is an 
utter, total, unstinted self-abnegation (as it must always appear 
to our selfish intelligence) on the part of the infinite love, 
whereby the creature being naturally vivified or made to appear 
as if he had life in himself, and thereupon freely avouching him- 
self the impassioned enemy of the divine infinitude, the creator 
is seen frankly acquiescing in such enmity as his only suitable 
or worthy ground of action, and proceeding at once to vindicate 
his proper power by converting this created evil and falsity into 
a good which shall be infinite, and a truth which shall be abso- 
lute. 

Perhaps what I said just now about creation always and of ne- 
cessity appearing to our eyes to be a self-denying operation of 
the divine love, may strike the reader as still unproved. Let 
me then briefly try to make good to his understanding the 
ground of this proposition. 

When we call God's love infinite or perfect, what do we mean 
by that predicate ? No doubt we mean something essentially 
congruous with the subject, and the subject of the predicate 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 53 

being love, we can only mean of course in calling it infinite or 
perfect, to allege that it is a love without any alloy of self; that 
it has no subjective ends ; that its aims are altogether objective, 
ok. tend to the aggrandizement of whatsoever is not itself. Now 
we can claim no intuitive knowledge of such love as this, but 
only a reflective one. For we are naturally prone to love our- 
selves primarily, and our neighbor derivatively, so that if any 
conflict of interests diversify our intercourse, it costs us a strong 
effort of self-denial to do him justice. In this manner self-deni- 
al, self-sacrifice, has become to our minds the symbol of pure 
love — love disengaged from sense and putting on spiritual attri- 
butes. In proportion as our love is void of passion or claims an 
active quality, it involves an element of self-abasement, or dis- 
owns all subjective and acknowledges only objective ends. No- 
toriously the purest form of passion known to us is a mother's love 
for her child. And the reason is that there is ordinarily far more 
of spontaneity in it than in any other passion ; that it habitually 
exhibits a greater degree of self-forgetfulness. And this being 
the case — namely, that the divine love is the pure love it is 
because it is unimpassioned, or has no selfish ends, being wholly 
addressed to the blessing of whatsoever is most remote from and 
opposite to itself; while ours, on the other hand, is the impure 
thing it is, because it is a merely organic or passionate love, being 
addressed to selfish ends, that is, to the aggrandizement of such as 
are in relations, not of remoteness and opposition to ourselves, 
but only of nearness and agreement — it is at once evident 
that the divine love must either remain wholly unknown and 
impracticable to us, or else must reveal itself in finite imagery, 
in lineaments adapted to our sensuous intelligence, and so alone 
find its chance of awakening our responsive sympathy. 

This was all I meant in saying that the creative love must 
always wear a self-denying aspect to our natural understanding. 
The obligation grows out of the inevitable ignorance and inex- 
perience we are under by nature in divine things ; and unless 
therefore the creative wisdom tenderly accommodated itself to 
these natural exactions, we should remain dead to the faintest 
possibility of spiritual life. 

But now that I have made this explanation, let us pre- 
pare for a new aspect of our subject, and begin looking at 



54 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

creation no longer in its strictly universal or generic aspect, as 
a descending movement of the divine life in man, but in itg par- 
ticular or specific aspect, as an ascending movement of that life. 
Hitherto we have been more intent upon the statics of creation 
than its dynamics. That is to say, we have been looking too 
exclusively at nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, as serving 
to give the creature selfhood or subjective identity, which is a 
conscience of alienation from (otherness tliaix) his maker. But 
our attention is due in at least an equal degree to history also, 
as an emphatic counter-movement to nature in the interest of 
the creature's spiritual freedom or individuality, whereby he 
reacts against this finite impulsion, and seeks to reunite himself 
with the infinite. Nature is a centrifugal movement of the cre- 
ative providence, whereby the creature becomes projected or 
set off to his own consciousness from the creator, by all the 
breadth of mineral, vegetable, and animal existence. History 
is an answering centripetal movement of the same providence, 
whereby the creature becomes gradually lifted out of his min 
eral, vegetable, and animal thraldom, into properly human pro- 
portions, or endowed with conscience. And creation conse- 
quently would be very inadequately conceived by us, if we 
should slight either of these majestic and coequal factors, either 
nature or history. They are both alike essential to the concep- 
tion, nature as symbolizing its finite maternal side, history its 
infinite paternal one ; nature as supplying the generic element, 
the element of identity in the creature which makes him objec- 
tive to himself, or furnishes the fixed immutable ground of his 
consciousness, and history as supplying the specific element, 
the element of individuality in the creature, which makes him 
objective to God, or invests him with moral character, i. e. 
with a conscience of good and evil, and so furnishes the free, 
contingent, movable ground of his consciousness. 

Let the reader diligently note the force of what has here 
been said. Nature and history are both alike and most strictly 
involved in the philosophic idea of creation, and they have them 
selves no other function than sedulously to evolve it. It is im- 
possible that creation should really take place, save in so far as 
it takes place actually. In other words, the creature can possess 
no real or absolute being in God, save in so far as he possesses 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 55 

actual or phenomenal existence in himself. And any creation 
therefore would pronounce itself palpably inchoate, which should 
pretend to establish the creature's derivative being upon any 
other basis than that of his own underived form, or avouch his 
spiritual individuality by any other evidence than that of his 
natural identity. Thus nature and history are both alike neces- 
sary portals of the true or spiritual and eternal world ; but they 
are nothing more than portals, and furnish no glimpse, save in 
the way of inverse correspondence, of the interior things belong- 
ing to it. They are both alike an inevitable preliminary matrix 
or mould of God's spiritual creation, which is man ; but they are 
absolutely nothing whatever but such actual matrix or mould : 
nature, in its direct or objective bearing upon man, attesting 
the descent of the creator to the creature's level ; while history, 
which is man's subjective protest or reaction upon nature, attests 
the creature's consequent rise to the level of the creator. 

This is that dual consciousness which man is said to own by 
creation, and which is symbolized in sacred writ under the terms 
male and female ; the former term corresponding to nature, the 
latter to history. * His nature, simply because it is a created 
one, is made up of two utterly disproportionate elements, one 
infinite and absolute, the other finite and contingent ; one active 
or creative, the other passive or reactive ; one generic or uni- 
versal, the other specific or particular ; one utterly objective or 
unconscious of self, the other profoundly subjective or self-con- 
scious. Such is man's natural genesis, such his inevitable make 
as a created being. Every man, by virtue of his natural crea- 
tion, has this conjoint inward and outward consciousness, this 
conjoint objective and subjective parentage, i. e. claims both an 
implicit community or identity with all existence, and an ex- 
plicit individuality or difference from it. 

No philosophy accordingly is worth a moment's regard, but 
confesses itself on its face unspeakably shallow and futile, which 

* The reason why the former constitutes a descending movement of providence, 
and the latter an ascending one, is that in the natural man (homo) the human or 
specific principle, the principle of individuality (Eve), which allies us with the 
inward and infinite, is subject to the cosmical or generic principle, the principle 
of universality (Adam), which allies us with the outward and finite; while in the 
historic and moral development of the race (vir) the latter principle serves, and the 
former rules. 



56 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

attempts to construct a doctrine of being upon the assumed 
absoluteness of nature and history. Real, which is spiritual, 
existence is utterly inexplicable upon any such basis, since the 
life we derive from nature and history is only phenomenally 
ours, while in reality it is altogether the creator's life in us. 
For suppose creation fully accomplished in the exact equation 
of creator and creature ; the creature after all has no real but 
only a phenomenal existence. Suppose the creator, on his part, 
to have furnished the creature an ample basis of self-conscious- 
ness by vivifying his nature, or graduating it to his sensuous 
recognition under the successive masks of mineral, vegetable, 
and animal existence ; and suppose the creature, on his side, to 
have arrived consequently at the amplest and most vivacious 
self-consciousness. What then ? Why, after all, the creature 
has not attained to true, but only to phenomenal being ; for how- 
ever much he alone all the while appears to be, it is neverthe- 
less God alone who all the while really is, under that appearance. 
No doubt the creature seems to himself absolutely to be, to be 
naturally, as it were, or by inherent right ; and on the strength 
of that appearance manages to simulate spiritual character by 
freely appropriating good and evil to himself, or charging him- 
self with positive merit and demerit in God's sight. But he is 
and remains a mere image or shadow of real existence. The self- 
hood or freedom which he feels to be so absolute is a pure provi- 
dential concession to him in the interest of his ultimate emanci- 
pation from nature and history, or his eventual spiritual evolu- 
tion. It is all the while God's veritable and sole life in his na- 
ture, mercifully consenting to appear as his life. It is the crea- 
tive love existing or going forth from itself in creaturely form ; 
and although the form or appearance thence resulting is that of 
the creature alone, the total being or reality of the appearance 
refers itself to the creator, and must eventually be recognized 
in that light by the creature, unless he would remain forever 
swamped in spiritual ignorance and folly. What an egregious 
sciolism accordingly every philosophy must present, which at- 
tempts to account for existence upon its own data, or without 
deference to the commanding light of revelation which alone 
declares its true raison d'etre. 

You see at a glance then what a profound abyss, to Sweden- 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 57 

borg's judgment, separates being from existence, spirit from 
nature. You see, in short, how infinitely remote from spiritual 
sonship to God our natural creation leaves us, and how obligato- 
ry it is upon him therefore, if he would ever spiritually affiliate 
us to himself, to give us redemption from our own nature. And 
this great redemption, how shall it ever be able to come about? 
By the very nature of the case, the sphere of its evolution is 
restricted to the limits of the created consciousness, so that the crea- 
tor can command absolutely no enginery to effect it, which is 
not supplied exclusively by the resources of that consciousness. 
The creator is bound indeed to fulfil the obligation by his own 
sheer unassisted might ; but this might will be weakness save 
in so far as he is able to sink himself in the created conscious- 
ness, or make the creature's unaffected selfishness and cupidity 
the all-sufficient gauge and fulcrum of his power. How then 
shall this grand drama of redemption, intimately complicated as 
it is with the immutable laws of creation, ever be conceived as 
actually traversing those laws, so as to bring forth the most defi- 
nite spiritual issues to the human consciousness, without in the 
slightest degree violating their sanctity, or enfeebling their va- 
lidity ? 

This is the question of questions to the philosophic mind ; and 
if I can succeed in conveying to the reader even a clouded ray 
of the light I get from Swedenborg in regard to it, I shall not 
only, I am persuaded, have given him a key to all the meta- 
physic doubts which vex his intellectual progress, but I shall 
have supplied him a grateful stimulus also to a more close, ear- 
nest, and energetic prosecution of his most urgent practical duties, 
which are those he owes to the great truth of human society, 
fellowship, or equality. 

X. 

History, according to Swedenborg, resolves itself into the ex- 
istence of the church on earth : and the existence of the church, 
spiritually understood, means the purgation of human nature by 
divine power. That is to say, there could have been no such thing 
as an historic resurrection of the human consciousness, but man's 
life must always have remained sunken in the mud of mere an- 
imality, unless our natural loves, which are those of self and the 



58 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

world, had been permitted from the beginning to organize them- 
selves in religious form, and assume the initiative in human affairs 
under a quasi divine sanction. The necessity of this providential 
permission is obvious. For if by nature man is the spiritual oppo- 
site of God — and he must be that in order to be anything at all 
— it is clear that he can never be brought into living or spiritual 
harmony with God, unless the natural loves which base his 
action become interested factors in that result. It is true they 
will be very infirm factors, but they are nevertheless the only 
ones the case admits of, since it is evident that no outward con- 
straint can bo practised upon a spiritual subject, nor any change 
effected in him without his own consent and co-operation being 
to some extent enlisted. It is natural or logical enough, no 
doubt, in the potter, to spurn the clay which will not lend itself 
to his plastic advances ; because the potter does not stand in a 
creative, but only in a formative relation to the work of his 
hands. That is to say, he does not himself provide the clay, 
out of which his work is to be fabricated, but only the mould or 
form into which the clay is to be run. But it would be ex- 
tremely derogatory to the divine name to suppose him quarrel- 
ling with the material of human nature out of which alone his 
spiritual results are to be fashioned ; for he stands in an abso- 
lutely creative relation to those results. That is to say, he alone 
gives us physical existence, he alone vivifies it, animates it with 
selfhood, or renders it capable of moral life ; and he alone con- 
sequently is answerable if it should finally prove recreant to his 
spiritual requirements. 

Never accordingly for an instant does Swedenborg report the 
creative relation towards the creature, in his very lowest moral 
states, as a quarrelsome or even as a querulous one. On the con- 
trary he invariably represents the divine love as never breaking, 
but always most tenderly bending, our perverse moral states to the 
purposes of a mercy which is really infinite as embracing the sal- 
vation of the whole human race, and which otherwise must have 
appeared altogether finite, as embracing the destiny of a compara- 
tively few persons. Thus heaven and hell, as portrayed by Swe~ 
denborg's impartial pen, argue — inasmuch as they exist only 
by each other's antagonism — a finite love in the creator ; 
that is to say, a love which is not at harmony with itself, or has 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 59 

no unitary end ; and hence they logically confess themselves to 
be mere incidents of human progress, mere stepping-stones to 
the end which God proposes to himself in the viviflcation of hu- 
man nature. 

" The lord's love" says Swedenborg, " is the salvation of the 
whole human race " ; and such being his love, such also must be 
the aim of his providence.* Its salvation from what, pray? 
Why, from the spiritual evils and falsities which are strictly in- 
cidental to its finite experience, or its innate and essential igno- 
rance of the creative name and ways. Remember, I say the 
race's finite experience ; for the race of course comes to integral 
self-consciousness, to the consciousness of its own unity, only 
through the experience of its individual members gradually 
inducting human society or fellowship. The race itself has no 
existence apart from the individuals which compose it, and hence, 
beiro- neither good nor evil in itself, has no evils nor falsities of 
its own to answer for. But of the innumerable multitude of 
persons who compose the race, some — let us for convenience' 
sake say the half — unaffectedly conceive themselves to be 
good men, while the remainder quite as unaffectedly agree in 
pronouncing themselves evil men. And as good and evil, like 
light and darkness, do not cohere in themselves or directly, but 
only in some third or neutral quantity, these two kinds of men, 
so distinctly antagonized by their own consciousness, inevitably go 
asunder in divine things, and by their reciprocal contrariety pro- 
duce that bipolar aspect of the spiritual world which Sweden- 
borg characterizes under the familiar names of heaven and hell : 
the only difference between his notion of the subject and that 
which is popularly entertained being, that with Swedenborg it is 
those alone who feel themselves to be good men that constitute 
hell, and those only who feel themselves to be evil men that 
constitute heaven. 

While this discordant state of things endures in the spiritual 
world, or the higher regions of the mind, there can obviously 
be no unitary consciousness of the race on earth, or nothing but 
an enforced harmony in the lower degrees of the mind ; nation 
being divided against nation, family against family, and man 

* See Arcana Celestia, 1676, 1813, 2034, 2222, 2227, 2819, 6371 - 6373, 6720, 8273, 



60 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

against man. That is to say, whilst our consciences are so un- 
enlightened in divine things as to pronounce one man or one 
class of men absolutely, and not alone relatively, good, and 
another man or another class of men absolutely, and not alone 
relatively, evil, it is evident that human society, fellowship, or 
equality (which alone gives unity to the race, or endows it with 
permanent self-consciousness) cannot come about ; and man's 
life consequently must remain utterly chaotic or unredeemed, 
save in so far as certain providential instrumentalities, certain 
great social lieutenancies, arise to institute a quasi or provisional 
order in human affairs. 

Let me be perfectly understood. What I say is, that all 
society or fellowship among men is simply impossible or unen- 
durable, so long as one man or one class of men is held to be 
absolutely void of evil, and another man or another class of men 
absolutely void of good. For in that case the former must 
appear personally or in himself acceptable to God, and the latter 
must appear personally or in himself hateful to God, so that a 
religious obligation would constrain the good man to exclude the 
evil man from his society or fellowship in every possible way. 
If the evil man is personally revolting to God, how shall I dare 
to offend God by extending my personal countenance or sym- 
pathy to him ? Nothing surely can be plainer than this. Very 
well then, transfer your view for a moment to the spiritual 
world, as made up of the contrasted spheres of heaven and hell. 
Do you not see at once that if this contrast be absolute — i. e. if 
heaven and hell reflect an actual divine decree, and not the mere 
unfettered play of human freedom — the mind of man in nature, 
depending as it does for its heat and light upon the inflow of 
spiritual good and truth, must necessarily repugn the social con- 
ception of human destiny ; must necessarily revolt from it in 
fact, as from the grandest conceivable profanation of the divine 
name ? It is the pretension of human society to* take up the 
good and evil alike in its bosom, and shower its sunshine and its 
rain equally upon the just and the unjust. If then the spiritual 
world be established upon the absolute bipolarity of good and 
evil, that is to say, if the angel and the devil exhibit the same 
actual contrast to the divine regard that they do to ours, nothing 
can be more odious to the divine mind, nothing more contrary 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 61 

to his providence, than a state of things upon earth which puts 
forth the pretension, as society unquestionably does, practically 
to efface all distinction of good and evil among men, by lifting 
all men, saint and sinner, just and unjust, alike into the bosom 
of its own regenerate unity. 

Practically how stands the case then ? What light does 
Swedenborg shed upon the constitution of the spiritual world ? 
Does he affirm, so far as it was open to him to observe and 
ascertain, any absolute difference between heaven and hell, be- 
tween angel and devil ? That is to say, did he discover that 
the angel claimed any personal superiority to the devil in the 
divine regard, any superiority in himself? Or did he discover 
that the difference between them was purely relative, being alto- 
gether contingent upon the disproportionate attitude they bore 
with respect to the truth of human brotherhood, fellowship, or 
equality ? 

Unquestionably the latter verdict is the one invai'iably rendered 
by Swedenborg. After a quarter of a century's unbroken inter- 
course with angel and devil, he declares that in themselves or 
absolutely they are both alike ; that so far as their proprium or 
selfhood is concerned, there is nothing to choose between them. 
Those who are familiar with Swedenborg's books will need no 
testimonies from them to this effect, since such testimonies 
abound to their knowledge on every page. But I may properly 
cite a few of his innumerable dicta upon the subject, which may 
prove interesting perhaps, and even inspiring, to readers of a 
philosophic turn who have not had the same advantage. 

I quote first of all a pregnant statement of general princi- 
ples in regard to personality, which may fitly introduce the other 
extracts. 

" In heaven no thought is given to persons, nor to the things 
of person, but to things abstracted from person. Hence the 
angels have no recognition of a man from his name or other per- 
sonal attributes, but only from his distinctive human faculty or 
quality. The thought of persons limits the angelic idea, or 
finites it ; while that of things does not limit it, but gives it in- 
finitude. ISTo person named in the word is recognized in heaven, 
but only the human quality or substance symbolized by that per- 
son ; neither any nation or people, but only the human quality 



62 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

of such nation and people. Thus there is not a single fact of 
scripture concerning person, nation, or people which is known 
in heaven, where the angels are totally unconcerned about the 
personality of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and see no difference 
between Jew and Gentile, but difference of human quality. 
The angelic idea, refusing in this manner to be determined 
to persons, makes the speech of the angels as compared with 
ours unlimited and universal." * 

" Every man, regenerate though he be, is such that, unless 
the Lord withheld him from evils and falses, he would cast him- 
self headlong into hell." f 

" Every one now-a-days supposes that evils and falsities in man 
are dispersed and abolished while he is regenerating, so that 
when he becomes regenerate nothing of evil and falsity remains, 
but he is clean and righteous like one cleansed and washed with 
water. This, however, is utterly untrue. For no single evil or 
falsity in man can be so broken up as to be abolished, but on 
the contrary whatever evil belongs by inheritance to a person 
or has been actually contracted by him persists ; so that every 
man, even the regenerate, is in himself nothing but evil and 
falsity, as livingly appears after death. This truth flows from 
the fact that all the good and truth in man are the Lord in him, 
and all his evil and falsity are himself; so that every man, spirit, 
and angel, if left in the least to themselves, would plunge spon- 
taneously into hell. This is why in scripture the heavens are 

* Arcana Celestia, 5225, 8343, 9007. 

t Arcana Celestia, 7S9. It must be remembered, in connection with these state- 
ments of Swedenborg, that lie always represents delight to be the essence of hell 
as of heaven also ; only the delights of one are opposed to the delights of the other. 
Thus as heaven with Swedenborg means a mental state in which the love of God 
and the love of the neighbor rule, and the loves of self and the world obey, so hell 
means a mental state in which this hierarchy is inverted, the lower loves govern- 
ing, and the higher ones serving. Irs delights accordingly are so intimate and 
exquisite as being bound up with the subject's self, that he with difficulty credits 
their infernal character and derivation, and inclines in fact to regard them as truly 
celestial. Swedenborg, in his profoundly interesting book on the Divine Provi- 
dence, says that he had been " let in to the delights of the selfish love of rule," and 
he found it " to exceed all the delights in the world." It was " a delight of the 
whole mind from its inmost to its ultimate substances, but it was only felt in tho 
body as a certain pleasurable and gladsome inflation of the breast. I perceived 
that from this supreme delight, as from their fountain, flow all evil delights, such 
as adultery, fraud, revenge, blasphemy, etc." Divine Providence, 215. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 63 

called impure. The angels confess this truth, and no one who 
does not do so can relish their society. It is God's mercy alone 
which frees them from evil, yea, which draws them and keeps 
them out of hell, to which they have a headlong inclination." * 

" There is no moral or intellectual rectitude which is to be 
ascribed to the angel himself, but only to the lord in him. 
The most celestial angel is in himself altogether false and evil, 
what is good and true in him being not really but only apparent- 
ly his own." f 

" All good and truth is of the lord, and what is his remains 
his in those who receive it ; for it is divine, and refuses to be 
the private property of any man. He consequently who appro- 
priates the divine to himself" — i. e. takes any merit to himself 
for his moral or personal excellency — " really defiles and pro- 
fanes it." | 

" It has been demonstrated to me by lively experience, that 
every man, spirit, and angel, viewed in himself or as to what is 
peculiarly Ms own in him, is the vilest excrement, and that if he 
were left to himself he would breathe only hatreds, revenges, 
cruelties, and foulest adulteries. These things are his •proprium 
t)r distinctive selfhood. This is evident to reflection from the 
fact that man in his native state is viler than all beasts ; and 
when he grows up and becomes his own master, unless external 
bonds which are of the law, and the bonds he instinctively as- 
sumes in order to grow greatest and richest, prevented him, he 
would rush into every iniquity, nor ever rest until he had sub- 
jugated everybody else to himself, and possessed himself of their 
substance, showing no favor to any but those who should become 
his abject slaves. § Such is the nature of every man, however 
ignorant he be of the fact in consequence of his want of power 
to act himself out ; but give him the power, and release him 
from the obligations of prudence, and his inclination would not 
belie his opportunity. The beasts are not so bad as this, for 

* Arcana Celestia, 868. 

t Arcana Celestia, 633. 

| Apocalypse Eevealed, 758. These facts shed light upon another statement of 
Swedenborg, to the effect that " there is no enforced or arbitrary authority in heav- 
en ; since no angel in his heart acknowledges any one superior to himself but the lord 
alone." Apocalypse Explained, 735. 

§ One would say that Swedenborg had had a glimpse of the second French Em- 
pire. 



64 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

they are born into a certain order of nature. Those that are 
fierce and rapacious do indeed inflict injury, but only from self- 
preservation, devouring others to appease hunger, and ceasing 
from violence Avhen this want is satisfied." * 

These citations amply suffice to show that Swedenborg de- 
tected no manner of difference, so far as their selfhood or per- 
sonality was concerned, between angel and devil, but on the 
contrary an absolute identity. That is to say, he discovered 
nothing in the angel which was the least degree meritorious 
towards God, and nothing in the devil which constituted the 
slightest ground of ill desert towards him. In short, he found 
the utmost actual difference between the two ; but this difference 
was no way subjective as reflecting any personal merit upon the 
one, or any personal demerit upon the other, but purely objec- 
tive as reflecting a difference of relation in them to something 
not themselves. 



XI. 

No doubt the statements we have just been canvassing may 
be said to be untrue ; which is an easy, but by no means a rea- 
sonable, way to dispose of them. I myself see very clearly that 
they labor under the disadvantage which attaches to all spiritual 
or highest truth, namely, that it appears true only to those who 
wish it to be true, that it has only an intrinsic probability to 
back it, being destitute of all extrinsic likelihood, of all outward 
form and comeliness. But I am sure that to those who are pre- 
pared by previous culture to receive Swedenborg's statements 
on their own evidence — and the number of these I conceive can- 
not be small — they cannot help possessing a profound philosophic 
significance. For they go clearly to establish this fact, that the 
insufficiency of the moral hypothesis to account for existence — 
the hypothesis of our personal independence or absoluteness, 
as maintained, for example, by Fichte — is a fundamental pos- 
tulate of angelic wisdom. And this is something quite new to 
philosophy, which has always had its hands so absurdly full of 
doubt and denial in regard to physical realities, as to permit 
it neither time nor inclination to harbor the slightest suspicion in 
* Arcana Celestia, 987. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 65 

regard to the reality of the moral world. If then it is only our 
physical experience that we can reckon upon as stable, while 
our moral or subjective consciousness is the true realm of illu- 
sion, forever mocking us with hopes that mislead and betray, 
philosophy has still a capital chance to get upon its legs, by sim- 
ply adjusting itself for the first time in history, no longer to the 
specious appearance of things, but to their absolute reality. If 
it be true, as Swedenborg reports, and I for one have no mis- 
giving upon the subject, that all celestial and all spiritual intel- 
ligences, in proportion as they are wise, agree in renouncing 
the moral hypothesis of creation, or in holding the creator to be 
influenced in his work by no subjective or personal aims, but by 
ends purely objective and impersonal, I do not see how philos- 
ophy can fail on the instant to perceive an incomparable enlarge- 
ment of her borders, literally such an aggrandizement of her 
horizon as her annals have never yet recorded. For her only 
stumbling-block from the beginning has been the subjective 
datum in consciousness, or our imbecile conceit of our own abso- 
luteness. And here, at last, comes Swedenborg with an induc- 
tion for the first time adequate to the facts, being as broad as 
human nature itself — i. e. as high as heaven and profound as 
hell — which shows us that there is in truth nothing so little 
absolute, so largely fallacious, as our moral or subjective con- 
sciousness ; that is to say, nothing so intensely dependent, so 
subtly contingent, so exquisitely and essentially relative to some 
thing else. So that if philosophy would only consent to look 
at these astonishing books, she would no longer feel any need to 
spend money for that which is not bread, and her labor for that 
which satisfieth not. 

What, then, is this grand " something else" which is of such 
poignant interest to philosophy, as reducing all our subjective pomp 
and clamor to " an idiot's tale, full of sound and fury, signifying 
nothing " ; as abasing, indeed, what we have always deemed the 
majestic finalities of heaven and hell — the finished and sov- 
ereign personalities of angel and devil — to its own sheer and 
exclusive constitutional ministry ? 

It is the interest of revelation. The grand controlling in- 
terest which all things, whether in heaven, on earth, or in hell, 
obey, is the necessity of an adequate revelation of the divine 



66 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

name. Spiritual existence — the existence of spiritual affection 
and thought — is indispensably conditioned, according to Swe- 
denborg, upon a plenary revelation of the creative name in the 
created nature. Why ? For the simple reason that the crea- 
ture can claim no intuitive or a priori knowledge of the creator, 
and must come to know him therefore only as he is reflected in 
himself. He can know his creator a posteriori only, i. e. only 
through an actual experience of the creative presence and power, 
as revealed in the created nature. In a word, the created con- 
sciousness, the self-consciousness of the creature, is of itself and 
of necessity the sole measure and mirror of the creative perfec- 
tion. 

I am not going to argue the matter here set down, the alleged 
necessity of a divine revelation. I should be very loath to influ- 
ence any one, even in what seems to me a good direction, against 
the impulses of his own heart ; and those who are already dis- 
posed by independent or original culture to an affirmative view 
of this question will dispense with persuasion. But I neverthe- 
less greatly desire to put the question in its true light before the 
reader, and I will, therefore, briefly restate it in the form it 
takes to my own intelligence. 

In the first place let me say what is meant by revelation. The 
term is frequently, and indeed commonly, used as if it were sy- 
nonymous with information, whereas it claims an utterly distinct 
and very much profounder meaning. To inform me of anything 
is to give me knowledge which is essentially level to the human 
faculties, or belongs legitimately to the realm of science ; while 
revealed knowledge, properly so called, is knowledge which is 
essentially veiled or hidden from men's intelligence, and so trans- 
cends the legitimate grasp of science. Thus to reveal is to 
unveil what has been hitherto concealed under a veil of con- 
trary appearances. The revelator, properly so called, is not a 
scientific genius, like Kepler, who sagaciously detects and ex- 
poses the hitherto unsuspected scope of natural law. He is 
rather, like Christ, a man of no scientific culture whatever, 
who yet, by force of his active humanitary sympathy and in- 
sight, livingly discerns and reproduces in himself the unknown 
spirit which animates all nature and history, but is persistently 
denied, dishonored, and crucified by their remorseless, insensate 



THE SECBET OF SWEDENBOEG. 67 

letter. Swedenborg gives me a great deal of information about 
spiritual things which I am very glad to get ; and I accordingly 
feel the same qualified esteem, in kind if not in degree, for him, 
that I do for Humboldt, or Fourier, or any other veracious man 
of science, whose labors, in any sphere of the mind, go to pro- 
mote the race's progress. But he reveals absolutely nothing to 
me. That is to say, he sheds no new and living light upon the 
secret things of the divine providence, which have been hitherto 
obscured by the facts of nature and the events of history. On 
the contrary, his life was that of our average manhood, and the 
secrets he divulges in relation to the spiritual world, were not 
things inwardly discerned by him, but outwardly communicated 
to him by others ; they were, as he himself describes them, 
strictly audita et visa, the fruit exclusively of ocular and auric- 
ular experience amongst angels and spirits. He never pretends 
for a moment to bring mankind a new revelation, being alto- 
gether content to subside into the humble servant of the chris- 
tian verity ; and if he had been a man of that stamp, we should 
doubtless have found his so-called " revelations " plainly attribut- 
ing themselves to the same limbo of vanity which has spawned 
so much of the flatulent literature of our modern spirit-rap- 
ping. 

Revelation then does not mean simple information, as it is 
corruptly used to do ; nor does it ask the least leave of the sci- 
entific intellect, since it is concerned with truths which are 
utterly beyond the original compass of the intellect to divine, 
however perfectly it may come afterwards to reflect them. Rev- 
elation discloses the existence in man of a higher than the moral 
or voluntary life, a life which has indeed always been symbol- 
ized by that, but which puts itself at a hopeless remove from 
it by rigidly disclaiming a finite genesis, and appealing only to 
infinite sanctions. Now science is the organ of the distinctively 
finite intellect, the intellect tethered to sense ; and though doubt- 
less it will one day yield a prompt reverberation, a cordial floor- 
ing and support, to the instincts of this higher life, the two spheres 
are nevertheless as essentially distinct as those of freedom and 
bondage. 

It is plain now what revelation does not mean, and incident- 
ally to that of course what it does mean. And having ascer- 



68 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

tained thus much, let us next proceed to inquire how it is that 
revelation justifies itself, or is able to avouch its own supreme 
necessity. 

Revelation, according to Swedenborg, is essential to a true or 
living acknowledgment of God, in contradistinction to a mere 
doctrinal or traditional acknowledgment. An unrevealed God 
is practically no God at all to the human understanding, but is 
and must remain forever incognizable to every intelligence be- 
neath his own ; for a direct or immediate contact with the infi- 
nite would be obviously fatal to the finite understanding, and 
the only alternative of such contact is the mediate or indirect 
one which revelation affords. A direct or immediate knowledge 
of God on our part would imply that there was some common 
bond between him and us, something continuous from him to 
us and from us to him, some point of identity or indistinction 
which may livingly fuse the two, just as the marble fuses sculp- 
tor and statue in its own embrace, or the mother fuses father 
and child in her own quickened bosom. But the hypothesis of 
creation stringently excludes all such community or identity. 
That hypothesis makes the creator all and the creature nothing 
save by him ; so that the very faculty of knowledge by which 
the latter seeks to know the former, is his only in appearance, 
while in reality it is the creator's power in him. Creation is, to 
be sure, an exact equation of the creative and created natures, 
but an equation in which one factor is wholly active and the 
other wholly passive, or in which one really is while the other 
only appears. To talk of the creature truly knowing the crea- 
tor under these circumstances, is to talk arrant nonsense. The 
statue, wrought by the sculptor out of the reluctant marble, is 
infinitely nearer to a just appreciation of the character of the 
sculptor, in the entire compass of his civil, religious, and domes- 
tic being. For the statue is a material existence at least, and 
has thus one point of identity with the sculptor, which makes 
it infinitely nearer to the latter than the latter himself is to God. 
There is absolutely no such neutral point, or point of indiffer- 
ence, between creator and creature, for the very nature or 
subjective identity of the latter, which to his own consciousness 
disjoins him absolutely from the creator, is, after all, only a per- 
petual 2wmission of the creative love in the interest of his sub- 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOEG. 69 

sequent spiritual possibilities. The creator, no doubt, sinks or 
merges his infinitude in our finite lineaments ; but as he, on his 
part, does not thereby cease to be, so we, on ours, do not there- 
by begin to be, but only to exist or appear to our own con- 
sciousness. In other words, God so vivifies by his own substance 
our native destitution of being, as that we thenceforward seem 
to live of ourselves, or, as we say, naturally ; appear to ourselves 
absolutely to be, while he as absolutely disappears. But both 
the appearance and the disappearance are utterly fallacious, if 
we push them beyond their proper limits ; that is, if they are 
not seen to be valid only within the compass of our finite con- 
sciousness, or to the extent of our sensuous understanding : the 
eternal truth of the case being all the while that God alone 
really is, in spite of his disappearance to sight, and that we 
ourselves really are not, in spite of our profuse semblance of 
being. 

Or let me demonstrate the impossibility of a direct knowledge 
of God, from the necessary limitations of knowledge itself. We 
cannot know God immediately or independently of revelation, 
because the very nature of our knowledge forbids it. 

Knowledge, properly speaking, is what relates us to outlying 
things — things that are external to ourselves. It always implies 
a basis of sensible experience. It is true that we often say that 
we know things when we do not really know them, i. e. as based 
upon sensible evidence, but only remember them, as based upon 
rational evidence, i. e. as having learned them. Thus we say 
that we know two and two to be equal to four, or the sum of 
the angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles. But 
we know no such thing, in the proper sense of the word knowl- 
edge. It is, in fact, only a compact way of saying that we have 
been rationally convinced of such equality, or have learned it 
before now. Equality is a term of relation between two or 
more things, and relationships are cognizable only to the reason, 
never to sense. In this way we perpetually confound facts 
of memory which pertain to the rational or reflective under- 
standing with facts of sense, which pertain to our bodily expe- 
rience ; but the two spheres are nevertheless perfectly distinct. 
We know only what our senses in some form or other avouch, that 
is, facts of finite existence. We believe only what our reason or 



70 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

reflection in some form avouches, namely : that an infinite be- 
ing relates all these existences in unity. In short, sense is 
the invariable ground of knowledge; reason, of belief; and the 
two things should never be confounded in serious discourse. 

If then, in this state of things, we should maintain that a 
direct knowledge of God is possible to us, a knowledge irrespec- 
tive of any revelation, the inference would be that God is an 
external being to us, that he is related to us by our senses, and 
hence is inferior to us ; for whatsoever lies outside of the mind 
is below the mind, or inferior to it. But this is the hoarse and 
sottish croak of superstition. No such God exists. In the first 
place, there is nothing absolutely, but only phenomenally, external 
to the mind (or spiritual universe) ; all that sensibly exists being 
but the mind's furniture, or existing only to proclaim and illus- 
trate its spiritual unity.* The sensuous or uncultivated mind 
does indeed affirm the absolute as well as the relative objectivity 
of the things of sense ; that is, it tacitly concedes to the tree 
and the horse a virtual independence or immortality, in allowing 
them to exist out of relation, not only to the individual con- 
sciousness (the vir), which is right, but also to the universal 
consciousness (the homo'), which is silly. But the spiritual or 
regenerate thought of man rectifies this shallow dogmatism, and 
makes all sensible existence to fall within the unitary mind of 
the race, makes it in truth to be simply constitutive of the mind 
to its own recognition; and consequently if everything that 
sensibly exists does so only in relation to the mind of the race, 
or falls under the human consciousness and not above it, why 
then of course, we can bring God into external or sensible con- 

* " Out of the ground the lord God formed every beast of the field, and every 
fowl of the air, and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them ; and 
whatsoever the man called it, that was the name thereof. And the man gave name to all 
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. — Gen. ii. 19, 20. 

Surely no one can for a moment seriously suppose this to be the record of a lit- 
eral historic event ; every sober judgment, on the contrary, must regard it as an 
expressive symbol of the great creative truth, that man (spiritually regarded) is 
the measure of existence, that is, that all things in nature derive their specific 
form and significance from the relation of use they bear to the human mind. 
Name, in the science of correspondences, means quality ; and by " man giving 
name " to all existence is signified therefore, that all the lower forms of nature, 
mineral, vegetable, and animal, owe their specific genius or worth to the relation 
of nearness they sustain to the human type of character. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 71 

tact with our intelligence only at the cost of transmuting the 
absolutely creative relation he bears to the mind, into a phenom- 
enally constitutive relation ; that is, at the cost of degrading him 
from the throne of his infinitude into an abject article, neither 
more nor less, of the race's mental furniture. 



XII. 

I will assume, accordingly, without further parley, that a true 
or living knowledge of God is inevitably conditioned upon an 
authentic revelation of his name. The next question in order 
is, what is the method of this revelation ? How does it actually 
come about ? It must obviously do so in the most gradual man- 
ner, since its full accomplishment is contingent upon the advent 
of a true society or brotherhood among men upon the earth : 
the evolution of such society or brotherhood, again, being itself 
contingent upon a previous experience and exhaustion of the 
patriarchal, the municipal, and the national or political admin- 
istration of human affairs. The truth of an absolute society, 
fellowship, equality among men, as the consummation of our 
earthly destiny, is indeed the hidden divine leaven which has 
been fermenting in all history, and even from its rudest begin- 
nings moulding the mind of man into inevitable conformity with 
itself. But from the nature of the case its operation, during all 
these initiatory stages of progress, must be purely negative. 
For until society puts on positive form — that is, until the truth 
of man's rightful fellowship or equality with man becomes scien- 
tifically demonstrated — the two elements which go to constitute 
the social conception of human life are arrayed in inveterate 
hostility to each other. In all the rudimentary social forms, the 
family, the city, the nation, an utter enmity exists between the 
generic and the specific element in consciousness, between the 
universal and the particular interests of man. A most pro- 
nounced contrariety between the homo and the vir, between the 
masculine and the feminine force in history, between the physical 
and the moral life of man, is everywhere accepted and carefully 
organized in institutions, as the true law of human destiny ; and 
the order thence ensuing does not hesitate to claim for its sup- 
port every guaranty of the most shameless force. At this rate, 



72 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

of course, society, which, spiritually or truly regarded, means 
the complete reconciliation of these jarring elements, is restricted 
to a purely negative exhibition, or makes itself felt, not as a friend, 
but rather as an enemy to the established order. 

Understand me. When I represent society as a disturbing 
force in past history, as a perpetual menace to the existing civil- 
ization, I do not mean to say that the family, the city, the na- 
tion, are not in themselves very admirable institutions, eminently 
conducive to progress. I only mean to say that they are sure 
to become perverted in their practical administration to private 
ends, and that they hence provoke the just resentment of upright 
minds, of men in whose bosom the social sentiment has begun 
to be quickened. All of these institutions are so many nurse- 
ries of the social destiny of man ; so many divinely appointed 
menstrua for the purification of the social sentiment in the breast 
of the race. They are a purely educational device of the divine 
providence by which the brute intelligence of the race becomes 
quickened to discern its inherent selfishness and incapacity, and 
to aspire after humaner and wiser methods. But they have 
only this strictly ministerial efficacy, and they accordingly be- 
come instruments of the most unhallowed tyranny whenever 
they are administered in their own interest, or without regard 
to this exquisite subordination. At such times all that is divine 
in man rises in revolt, and unless wiser counsels speedily pre- 
vail, revolt grows into revolution, and the existing bonds of in- 
tercourse among men become violently ruptured. 

But now by what recognized organ shall the social sentiment 
announce itself? Is any heart of man equal to the conception 
of a universal righteousness upon the earth, while as yet the 
earth is covered with fraud and violence ? Is any intellect of 
man able to give adequate voice to the inspirations of such a 
righteousness ? 

Absolutely none. No man is either good enough or wise 
enough to forecast human destiny, until that destiny shall have 
at least negatively avouched itself to human hope by the historic 
desecration of privilege among men, or the gradual destruction 
of every institution, however conventionally sacred, which 
organizes human inequality. The bare conception of a right- 
eousness truly divine upon the earth is rendered impossible, 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 73 

while the rightful inequality of man with man is enforced by- 
institutions which still challenge human respect. The only- 
thing that veils or obscures the divine name to men's eyes is 
the absence of any such living society or brotherhood of men 
as would justify them in ascribing human life to an infinitely 
wise and good and powerful source : in other words, is the pres- 
ence of all those institutions which seek to guarantee order by 
force instead of freedom. And the only thing consequently 
which in this state of affairs can at all reveal or unveil the divine 
name to men's recognition is some purely representative bond, 
some merely professional brotherhood or fellowship among men, 
some strictly formal or conventional society, which may have no 
particle of substantive virtue, but is yet full of the richest pro- 
phetic worth, as symbolizing that perfected work of God in our 
nature, which unites us with him down to our flesh and bones, 
or gives us resurrection from death even this side of the grave. 

This representative economy is called the church. The 
church, as a visible or ritual institution, limits itself, according 
to Swedenborg, to this purely representative sanctity. Spiritu- 
ally viewed, the church — what Swedenborg calls, accordingly, 
the new or final church, God's accomplished work in human 
nature — implies, of course, a deeper sanctity ; for it means 
that living society, fellowship, brotherhood of men which shall 
perfectly reconcile or fuse in its own sovereign unity all the 
existing contrarieties of human temperament and character, and 
so cover the earth with the glory of God as the waters cover 
the sea. The ritual church has never had the least just pre- 
tension to constitute this grand and living reality, but only to 
reflect or represent it to man's dawning spiritual intelligence. 
And it has done this only by blindly, no doubt, but still unflinch- 
ingly upholding the literal divinity of Christ against all gain- 
sayers, or persistently unmooring the hope of men from their 
own pygmy personalities, in order to anchor it afresh upon a 
great work of righteousness once for all achieved by absolute 
divine might in the very heart of their nature. I certainly 
set no value upon the technical " church " at this day in its 
ritual capacity. It has long since fulfilled all its legitimate uses 
in that line. It seems to me now, on the contrary, very much 
in arrears, spiritually, of its former competitor, " the world." 



74 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

In fact, it very plainly cumbers the ground which it has grown 
impotent any longer to fertilize, so that the only use, divine or 
human, it now seems to enact, is that of alienating men's cordial 
respect and sympathy from the entire ecclesiastical scheme of 
thought. But when I look back to what the church has done 
for mankind by its blind unreasoning and yet sagacious adher- 
ence to the letter of the truth — when I think how, above all, it 
has kept alive in the earth the tradition of an original divine 
innocence in our nature, which will one day spiritually repro- 
duce itself in every most abject finger and toe of our regenerate 
social and aesthetic consciousness, or obliterate in its infinite em- 
brace every filthy and pitiful remainder of our moral right- 
eousness — I know no bounds to my grateful respect and rev- 
erence for it. I feel indeed that all the vices which have attend- 
ed its actual administration have been richly compensated by 
that prodigious service. 

Revelation then, regarded as a full and impartial voucher of 
the divine name, is restricted to the same negative law of growth 
or evolution which society itself obeys, since it is identical with 
the very personality of society. So long, accordingly, as society 
itself is immature, so long as it is narrowed down by our native 
ignorance, conceit, and unbelief to a purely negative manifesta- 
tion, so long of necessity must revelation reflect its adverse for 
tunes, and content itself with the merely negative exhibition it 
gets in the distinctively ecclesiastical life of the world, or at the 
hands of the established church. 

This theory of the church as a strictly representative econo- 
my — as limited to conferring no real, but only a typical right- 
eousness upon its subjects — is enforced and illustrated by every 
incident that Swedenborg relates of his intercourse with angels 
and spirits. That intercourse appears indeed to have surcharged 
him with curious and recondite information in regard to the 
states of the church before authentic history began ; but as 
usual, he makes no attempt to systematize his knowledge ; prob- 
ably because he himself lived too near the era of the "last 
judgment" to be able to catch the key-note of the grand intel- 
lectual system to which all its developments are subservient.* 

* His angelic acquaintances labored under an equal disability. "Whenever he 
asked a judgment from them in regard to the intellectual prospects of the race, 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 75 

He thus learned, for example, that all those long-lived genera- 
tions mentioned in Genesis, which used to pique our juvenile 
admiration, from Adam to Seth, and Seth to Noah, and Noah to 
Eber, were not generations of persons by any means, as appears 
in the letter of the record, but only of churches which, in long 
succession, diversified the pre-historic annals of the race, and 
gradually hardened from the most fluid and infantile states of 
charity and faith into the rigidly fossil, or most unloving, unbe- 
lieving, and idolatrous thing, which the post-historic annals of 
the race prove the church to have been from the time of Abram 
to that of Christ. He gives us many beautiful, and, in a philo- 
sophic point of view, very interesting, glimpses of those early 
churches, and of the unaffected modesty, simplicity, and truth 
which characterized their tender genius. But I have no time, 
nor indeed inclination, to dwell upon these faint crepuscular 
gleams of the church in man. They are obviously one and all 
without any historic or scientific value (being thus only indi- 
rectly available to philosophy), because they one and all had no 
root in a redeemed nature of man, but only in certain specific 
differences of culture and character among men ; hence no out- 
ward body corresponding to their inward soul ; and they conse- 
quently lapsed into lower and ever lower states of natural 
innocence and integrity, until at last all savor of both was lost 
in that gigantic form of fraud and violence known as the Jewish 
church. 

I am well aware that nothing can be more opposed to the 
loose thought of the time, whether religious or secular, than the 
entire drift of Swedenborg's teaching in regard to the nature 
and office of the church ; but I have neither the presumption nor 
the inclination to offer myself as his apologist before the world. 

they professed a complete ignorance, saying that all they knew was, that there 
would he a great increase of free thought in the church, inasmuch as the man of 
the church would thenceforth be spiritually free, the old bondage of the letter being 
now broken up. See " Last Judgment," 73, 74. In his " True Christian Eeligion," 
123, he says : " The reduction of all things to order in heaven and hell " — that is, 
in the spiritual world — " is still an incomplete process, consequent upon the last 
judgment " ; but he hoped to shed some light upon it when it was completed. 
He calls " this process peculiarly that of redemption " ; but he died the year after 
this book was published, if I remember aright. At all events, he was not destined 
to do us this great service ; one, moreover, for which, I cannot help thinking, the 
singularly simplistic character of his intellect did not specifically qualify him. 



76 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

His statements, I doubt not, will sufficiently vindicate themselves 
in the long run to all minds seriously interested to understand 
them ; my sole concern with them meanwhile being to show 
how they justify themselves to my particular intelligence. He 
makes, indeed, very startling assertions. Over and over again, 
for example, he declares the church as a literal or ritual economy 
effete as to every divine and human use which once sanctified 
it ; * and announces in lieu of it a new and living church, built 
upon the altogether illiterate, unwritten, or internal scope of 
revelation, that is to say, upon the unfettered spiritual instincts 
of the race, which will enjoy all manner of spiritual peace or 
internal blessedness of life, because it will be instinct with true 
faith and true charity ; and which accordingly opens wide its 
arms of welcome and shelter to the whole religious world, what- 
ever be its petty dogmatic distinctions. 

Statements like these are doubtless very revolting to preju- 
dice, but while none but a fool would believe them on Sweden- 
borg's authority (as none but a fool would reject them for lack 
of any superior authorization), it must yet be admitted that 
myriads throughout Christendom have a dawning conviction of 
the same truth in their own minds, however little they may be 
able intellectually to reconcile that truth with the advance of 
man's spiritual destiny. Multitudes of people perceive the 
church — as a visible institution distinct from the state — to be 
a mere spectre in the earth, moping, and moaning, and wringing 
wan ineffectual hands over the places it once inhabited, but now 
only infests. It may not always be as frankly avowed, but a host 
of honest minds feel the same conviction I myself have long felt, 
which is, that the religious life of man, claiming to have inter- 
ests and aims essentially opposed or unreconciled to those of his 

* It must not be imagined for a moment that Swedenborg is so base-minded as 
to include the personnel of the church in these denunciations. This would degrade 
him to the level of Joe Smith at once, and relieve all intelligent men of a desire 
to hear any further from him. On the contrary, he looks at the church purely in 
the light of an intellectual system, and has not the least apparent conception that 
it prejudices any man's spiritual prospects, save in those rare instances where its 
dogmas have been intellectually confirmed by pertinacious sophistical reasoning. 
See " Apocalypse Explained," 233, 250, and " Apocalvpse Revealed," 426, where he 
shows the judgment upon the church to have respect to its dogmatic, not to its 
personal constitution. I will throw some quotations from Swedenborg bearing 
upon the general subject of the church into the Appendix. See note B. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 77 

secular life, has become at length a rank though unconscious 
imposture ; that it amounts, in fact, to the same ghastly and 
grinning caricature of reality which the corpse exhibits to the 
living man, or which the secular life, as opposed to the religious, 
always modestly admits itself to be. And such persons doubtless 
would gladly have their feeling become knowledge, their faith be- 
come sight; a result, as I conceive, wholly impossible, unless 
we come to take essentially the same view of the nature and office 
of the church that Swedenborg does, and deny it the least real, 
while allowing it the utmost representative, significance in re- 
gard to spiritual things. 

This then is the important question, Does the church properly 
claim a positive, or a merely negative office ? What has been its 
historic mission, to nourish, or only to purify ? Is the church 
the really constructive institution it is vulgarly reputed to be, 
capable of stamping one man or one class of men good before 
God, and another man or another class evil ? Or is it the rigid- 
ly detergent institution which Swedenborg proclaims it to be, 
utterly incapable of originating, much more of confirming, any 
personal differences among men, because its total providential 
purpose is to efface all existing inequalities in human character, 
and shut up all men alike, good and evil, virtuous and vicious, 
wise and simple, learned and ignorant, religious and scientific, 
devout and sceptical, great and small, rich and poor, white and 
black, to the hope of God's sheer, unlimited, un distinguishing 
mercy, to be yet fully revealed in the social regeneration of the 
race? 

Let us state the question in still another shape. 

The vulgar notion of the church in its purest, most orthodox, 
and therefore most vigorous or malignant form, is that it is a 
divine assessor in the earth, appointed to take stock of the ex- 
isting inequalities in human character, in order to build up an 
eternal heaven out of one kind of men, and an eternal hell out 
of another kind. Or we may say that it is a divine tariff im- 
posed upon all earthly products intended for the skies ; this 
tariff running so high, in certain cases, as to be altogether pro- 
hibitory, and actually consigning the excluded articles conse- 
quently to destruction. 

Obviously this conception of the church involves a fatal 



78 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

reproach to the divine name, inasmuch as it shows him dealing 
with his creatures no longer in an infinite and absolute, hut in a 
finite and contingent manner ; or exhibits him as superfluously 
good to some of them, and as superfluously evil to others. 

Swedenborg's conception of the church runs completely coun- 
ter to this prevalent notion, whether we regard it in its more 
orthodox and insolent, or its more sentimental and mendicant 
modes of manifestation. 

His idea of the church is, that it is at most a divine witness 
in the earth, holding out indeed to men's reverent attention a 
form of spiritual truth which will one day fall away and dis- 
close the infinite divine substance so long imprisoned within it, 
but which is totally incapable, under any amount of culture, of 
itself fructifying into that substance. The church witnesses to 
God's creative presence in humanity, but of course does not 
constitute it, as it sometimes insolently pretends to do ; and heav- 
en and hell are respectively nothing more nor less than the pos- 
itive and negative sanctions which the human conscience freely 
accords to the truth of the church's testimony. They have 
neither of them the least particle of relevancy whatever to the 
presumption of any absolute difference in men's character and 
standing before God ; for, as Swedenborg proves, angel and 
devil are perfectly identical in themselves, and differ exclusively 
in the lord. Their contrarious existence consequently furnishes 
no conceivable augury of human destiny, but confesses itself a 
result, pure and simple, of the church's imbecile administration 
in divine things, that is, of its persistent inability to bear wit- 
ness to the divine existence and character, without violating, in 
some sort, every instinct of man's freedom and rationality. 
Swedenborg shows, accordingly, throughout all his books, from 
their beginning to their close, that God has no joy in the angel, 
nor any grief in the devil, save as they stand favorably or unfavor- 
ably related to the prosperity of the church, i. e. tend to enforce 
or enfeeble the witness which it bears at once to the universality 
and the particularity of his presence and providence throughout 
the earth. The lord's love, as Swedenborg invariably reports 
it, is a universal love, being the salvation of the whole human 
race ; and no form of his church, therefore, can satisfy his re- 
gard, which is not practically identical with the interests of hu- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 79 

man society ; that is, which does not in itself structurally repro- 
duce and avouch the intimate and indissoluble fellowship, equality, 
brotherhood of universal man. 

As the former conception of the chnrch reflected a manifest 
opprobrium upon the divine name, by changing his relation to 
us from an absolute to a contingent one, from a spiritual or purely 
inward to a personal or purely outward relation, so this latter 
conception reverses that reproach, or implies the highest exalta- 
tion of the divine name, by universalizing his relation to us, or 
showing that under whatever infirmities of administration his 
name is really one and infinite, and utterly disavows, therefore, 
the imputation of duplicity and finiteness which the enforced 
antagonism of heaven and hell sheds upon it. 

Let us then try briefly to settle this question in the light of 
the principles we have already discussed. 



XIII. 

It has been abundantly demonstrated, in the earlier portions 
of this essay, that our natural selfhood, or subjective identity, 
is a pure exigency of the divine love and wisdom towards us, 
in the interest exclusively of our spiritual or objective individu- 
ality. 

There is nothing obscure in this proposition to any one who 
has read what precedes. It simply implies that our life is two- 
fold, that is, both natural and spiritual, conscious and uncon- 
scious, subjective and objective ; and then it alleges that the 
former of these elements is de jure if not de facto subservient 
to the latter. It is as if I should say that no child exists with- 
out the conjoint parentage of father and mother, and that in 
every such existence the part of the mother subordinates that 
of the father. Or, that every statue is the product of an ideal 
force and a material reaction to such force ; the former element 
in its production being primary, the latter secondary. Or, that 
a watch is a unit of two forces — one functional or dynamic, 
denoting its ability to keep time ; the other passive or static, de- 
noting its mechanical organization : and that this latter compo- 
nent of its existence is wholly subservient to the former. In 
all these cases the maternal force announces itself as giving ex- 



80 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 

istence to things, or phenomenally identifying them ; and the 
paternal force as giving them being, or absolutely individualizing 
them. 

These illustrations show what my proposition means to allege 
with respect to man. It implicitly alleges that man is a unit of 
two forces — one material, which finites or gives him conscious 
identity, and which we call nature ; the other spiritual, which 
infinites him or gives him unconscious individuality, and which 
we call God : and that the former of these forces is in right, if 
not in fact, altogether secondary and ministerial to the latter. 

Now such being the truth of things, the reader will agree with 
me, that nothing could more effectually tarnish the face of crea- 
tion, or embarrass its practical working, than to find the creature 
taking a different view of creative order from that of the crea- 
tor. If to the creative mind the natural interests of the creature 
are altogether secondary and subordinate to his spiritual inter- 
ests, while to the understanding of the creature himself they 
are altogether primary and commanding, it is inevitable that 
creation must so far wear a disorderly aspect, or argue a conflict 
between its constitutional factors. It is evident, in fact, that 
creation will never attain to its sabbath or rest, in the perfect 
union of its infinite and finite elements, until this difference be- 
tween them becomes practically overcome. 

Now, as a fact both of his own experience and of his observa- 
tion of others, every man knows that this conflicting estimate 
of natural and spiritual things actually exists between creator 
and creature. Every man knows that he is instinctively prone 
to over-estimate the actual and under-estimate the real ; to in- 
dulge a high appreciation of natural goods, and a comparatively 
feeble one of spiritual goods. And he regards it accordingly as 
the legitimate aim of his best culture to reverse this unfortunate 
habit, and so bring himself into cordial and permanent adjust- 
ment with the mind of God. 

Nor is this all. Every cultivated man — that is to say, every 
man who is not as yet hopelessly besotted either by the excess 
or the deficiency of nature's bounty towards him — perceives this 
actual adjustment of the finite with the infinite mind to be the 
total secret of human history ; to constitute both the universal 
and the particular scope of what we call progress, meaning by 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 81 

that, man's providential destiny upon earth, or the completed 
education of the race. No one is so dull as not to be able to 
recognize, either through himself or others, that a certain puri- 
fying process is going on in all history, public and private, 
whereby both the race and the individual are being gradually 
disciplined out of selfish into associated ends, and out of ignorant 
into enlightened methods, of action. Progress, whether public 
or private, seems to take place in an invariably negative way, 
that is, it always exacts a preliminary experience and acknowl- 
edgment of evil and error. Our vices and follies, collective 
and personal, have wrought us infinitely more advantage than 
our virtue and knowledge have ever achieved. Our best learn- 
ing has come to us in the way of unlearning prejudice, our best 
wisdom in the way of outgrowing conceit, our best action in the 
way of undoing what we have previously done of evil and false. 
In short, while the indisputable end of the creative providence is 
to endow us with its own infinitude, the invariable means it uses 
to effect this end is to saturate and nauseate us with the sense 
of our own inveterate finiteness. So palpably true is all this, 
that the fundamental grace of the religious character throughout 
history is humility ; the primary evidence of a spiritual quick- 
ening in the soul, repentance. And what can a fact of this 
magnitude mean, if notwithstanding we are to look upon the 
church as implying God's personal complacency towards one sort 
of men, and his personal ill-will towards another sort, that is, 
as supplying its subject with a positive and not a mere negative 
method of access to God? 

Such a notion of the church's efficacy would, in fact, stultify 
all history. For she has been the incontestable historic repre- 
sentative and protagonist of this negative divine administration 
in human affairs. Her proper function in the earth has always 
been to exalt men spiritually only by humbling them naturally, 
or making them heartily loathe the accidents of birth, tempera- 
ment, and genius, which give them an adventitious superiority 
to other men. Undoubtedly the church in its literal form has 
always exhibited a more or less gross perversion of this its origi- 
nal spirit ; that is to say, it has always contrived to replace the 
merely carnal or natural pride of the human heart, which it was 
appointed to discipline, by an infinitely more deadly religious or 



82 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

spiritual pride, which nothing short of hell can discipline. But 
some faint glimmer of spiritual life has always managed to keep 
itself alive underneath the church's cumbrous and heathenish 
ritual ; and there never was a time accordingly, throughout 
its history — until, perhaps, within a very recent period — when 
some direct heavenly succor was not available through it to sin- 
sick and weary souls. Even under its Jewish form the alto- 
gether purgative and sacrificial tenor of its ritual constrained 
thoughtful minds to see that, though the worshipper was brought 
outwardly nigh to God by the church, it was only with a view 
to teach him by that unrighteous privilege his real or inward 
remoteness, and so dispose him to that personal humility or 
charity towards less privileged men, upon which alone all spirit- 
ual divine blessing pivots. 

If this were the ever-latent virtue of the law, surely it is the 
ever-patent virtue of the gospel. No intelligent reader of the 
New Testament, it appears to me, can for a moment doubt that 
Christ and his apostles looked upon the Jewish church as exert- 
ing a strictly damnatory — never a justifying — power over all 
who cultivated its prescriptive righteousness. Christianity itself 
may be styled, in fact, a formal proclamation of the exhaustion 
of religion as a ceremonial, and its revival as a life. It imported 
the cessation of ritual or sacrificial worship as a means of ac- 
cess to God, and the substitution of an affectionate or heartfelt 
devotion in the worshipper, motived altogether upon God's re- 
vealed clemency to the unrighteous and the evil. The cleansing 
which the Jew derived from the law was a purely carnal one, 
inferring no manner of spiritual nearness to God, but rather 
spiritual distance from him, inasmuch as one whose heart cov- 
eted or even tolerated a ceremonial righteousness could not be 
supposed to appreciate a living or real one. In Christ this be- 
nighted ritualist was for the first time to lose his inward remote- 
ness from the source of life, and be brought spiritually near; 
was to be taught to renounce his literal or differential righteous- 
ness, based upon his assumed superiority in the divine sight to 
other men, and to cultivate an exclusively spiritual one, based 
upon his cordial fellowship or equality with all mankind. " Be- 
hold the days come, saith the lord, that I will make a new cov- 
enant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 83 

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel, saith 
the lord : I will put my law in their inward parts and ivrite it 
in their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my 
people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, 
saying, Know the lord : for they shall all know me from the least 
unto the greatest, saith the lord : for I will forgive their iniqui- 
ty, and I will remember their sin no more.'''' *" " Remember," 
says the apostle to the Ephesians, " that ye being in times 
past gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by 
that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by 
hands, at that time were without Christ, being aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants 
of promise. But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were 
far off are made nigh by his blood. For he is our peace who 
hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of 
partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the [only 
ground of] enmity, even the law of commandments contained 
in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, 
so making peace. — Through him we both have access by one 
spirit to the father." So again the same apostle, addressing the 
Colossians, says : " And you, being dead in your sins and the 
uncircumcision of your flesh, hath Grod quickened together with 
Christ, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the hand- 
writing of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to 
us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." f 

Evidently then the iniquity in the church against which Christ 
protested and rebelled was its pretension to confer upon its follow- 
ers a strictly legal or literal and personal righteousness — such 
a righteousness as implied a relation of merit on their part 
towards God, and a relation of demerit on the part of other 
people. And the righteousness he set before it was a purely 
spiritual one, or such a one as consists only in a temper of the 
most unreserved fellowship or equality with all men. In other 
words, the only church which Christ avouches is a living society, 
brotherhood, or fellowship of all mankind, which will disallow 
all distinction or privilege among men but that which grows out 
of the largeness and the zeal of the social spirit in their bosom ; 

* Jeremiah xxxi. 31, 33, 34 ; Hebrews viii. 8-12. 
t Ephesians ii. 11 — 18 j Colossians ii. 13, 14. 



84 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

a spirit which is sure to abase whatsoever is proud or lofty, and to 
exalt whatever is lowly. Nor can it be denied that for a brief 
while the literal christian church itself appeared roughly to 
apprehend the spirit of its founder, and was intent upon bringing 
forth the best fruits it knew. For we read in the Acts of the 
Apostles, that "all who believed were together and had all 
things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted 
them to all as every one had need." * 

Of course this was merely an effusion in the sphere of senti- 
ment on the part of the early disciples, and as such entitled to 
its proper consideration. It was doubtless of great advantage 
to cherish this spirit of hearty mutual succor, when the christian 
church was barely germinating as a material institution, or push- 
ing its way to light and air through the superincumbent layers 
of a totally inimical society. But the fact was without any 
strict philosophic value or permanent practical significance. For 
it must never be forgotten that the brotherhood of the church, 
or christian fellowship, is not based upon sentiment, i. e. does not 
admit a merely voluntary allegiance, but,' on the contrary, claims 
a foundation of the most rigid equity or justice, and hence makes 
itself obligatory upon men. We must never forget, in other 
words, when we are speaking of the christian church, according 
to the idea of its founder, or as a spiritual economy, that it is 
a strictly universal administration, claiming the gentiles for its 
inheritance and the lattermost parts of the earth for its posses- 
sion. The Old Testament prophecies and promises are replete 
with testimonies to this point. In Daniel's vision, for example, 
we read : " In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven 
set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed ; and the king- 
dom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces 
and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." 
Again : " I saw in the night visions, and behold ! one like the 
son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
Ancient of Days — and there was given him dominion and glory 
and a kingdom that all people and nations and languages should 
serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall 
not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." f 

* Acts ii. 44, 45. 

t Daniel ii. 44, and vii. 13, 14. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 85 

But there is no need to recur to the ancient seers, fascinating and 
majestic as their descriptions of the great redemptive sabbath 
are. Every reader, familiar with the New Testament, knows 
that Christianity professes to be a universal religion, and prom- 
ises to supersede or spiritually appropriate to itself all the re- 
ligions of the earth ; that its apostles were commissioned to go 
out into all the world and communicate the gospel of redemp- 
tion to every creature ; and that, consequently, if we diminish 
it of this pretension by consenting to look upon the church, as 
it has hitherto visibly existed at any time, in the light of a 
fulfilment of Christ's idea, we at once reduce Christ to the 
level of a Moses, a Buddha, a Zoroaster, a Mahomet, and leave 
him, like them, stripped of all exhaustive divine significance. 
And if the christian church have this inevitable universality of 
scope — if, in other words, the society or brotherhood which 
Christ instituted among men be essentially a spiritual society or 
brotherhood — then clearly no past, no present, and no future 
exhibition of the church, in carnal or ritual form, can justly 
claim to be anything more than a matrix of this spiritual result ; 
bearing precisely the same relation to it that the shell of a nut 
does to its kernel, or the husk of wheat to the mature grain, 
namely, a relation of the strictest protection and nutrition dur- 
ing all the protracted period of the church's spiritual infancy, 
i. e. of our social immaturity, and falling into contempt and 
oblivion whenever that use is accomplished. 



XIV. 

" Very well," I now think I hear my reader exclaiming, 
" I am ready to grant you that the primary office of the church 
has been to purify our consciences, by abasing the natural pride 
and covetousness in us which are so apt and eager to claim 
divine sanctions ; and that we are not entitled, consequently, to 
regard it in any more positive light than as, at best, a revelation 
or witness of God in the earth. But now tell me, I pray you, 
something about the beginnings of this revelation. How did it 
get itself started originally ? How, in other words, did the early 
church — the church in literal form — ever contrive to impose 
itself upon the popular belief as an authentic divine institution ? 



86 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

It is very evident, for example, that the Mosaic revelation, if it 
should take place in our day, would provoke, in spite of its un- 
questionable grandeur and dignity in a sensuous or picturesque 
point of view, very much the same rational obloquy that the 
sordid mormon imposture does. It would be scouted, in fact, 
as scientifically absurd by the greater part of Christendom. 
What makes the difference between then and now ? Is revela- 
tion altogether proportionate to the understanding addressed? 
Give me your ideas in full on this subject. Do you conceive 
revelation to be a fixed, or only a contingent quantity ? Do 
you regard it as absolute, or only relative to the human facul- 
ties ? Do you hold, for example, that the Mosaic revelation was 
true for its own time and place, but untrue for our day ? Did 
its authority, as a divine revelation, vest exclusively in its adap- 
tation to the very narrow hearts and minds to winch it was spe- 
cifically addressed? And does it challenge, consequently, no 
such authority to our present regard ? In short, does it prop- 
erly disclaim all pretension to that universality and perpetuity 
which, as it seems to me, we are entitled to demand in a revela- 
tion from God ? For I find myself, not unwilling indeed, but 
simply unable, to believe in any so-called revelation of the divine 
name which is destitute of these two characteristics — universality 
and perpetuity ; which, in other words, does not embrace within 
itself all space and all time, or proclaim itself identical with na- 
ture and history. You yourself have been, virtually at least 
if not actually, saying all along that no sufficing or perma- 
nent revelation is conceivable but upon these conditions. And 
what I want now, accordingly, is to get a more explicit state- 
ment of your views, that I may learn how you manage to be- 
lieve, as firmly as you do, in the truth of revelation, without 
perceiving the gross affront which every such pretension offers to 
the inviolate progress of the mind, or, what is the same thing, 
the continuity of natural and historic order." 

The answer to all this doubt is, as it seems to me, very sim- 
ple and salutary. Briefly stated it is as follows : The human 
mind, or natural and historic order, is itself only a process of 
revelation of the creative name ; and our technical " revela- 
tions," consequently, so far from affronting the mind's integrity, 
do but confirm it ; so far from invalidating nature and history, 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 87 

do but foreshadow and induct their sovereign function ; do but 
cradle and nurse, so to speak, their own highest and truest yet 
most unsuspected significance. But this statement is doubtless 
much too brief. Let me enlarge it. 

I am taught, then, by Swedenborg' s disclosures, not only to 
look upon nature and history as the true theatre of the divine 
revelation, but also to regard them as having absolutely no other 
purpose in existence than to serve as such theatre. That is to 
say, they did not originally exist as finalities or on their own 
account, and then become accidentally subjected to the apoca- 
lyptic function ; but their sole original title to exist derives from 
their exquisite subserviency to that function. This, in my opin- 
ion, constitutes Swedenborg's vast intellectual superiority to our 
ordinary religious and scientific soothsayers, that he gives us 
upon this subject no longer guesswork, but the fruit of positive 
insight. All our diviners, whether devout or sceptical, hold 
nature and history to a final or absolute and independent signifi- 
cance ; and thus find themselves compelled either to adjust rev- 
elation to cosmical order in a very crude irrational way, or else 
with my questioner to reject it altogether. Swedenborg, on the 
contrary, denies them the least independent worth, the slightest 
substantive significance, and leaves them valid only as furnish- 
ing a basis of divine knowledge consonant with the ever-grow- 
ing requirements of the human heart and understanding. They 
furnish a needful basis to the church in human nature, and have 
absolutely no spiritual significance apart from that function. The 
vulgar prejudice, on the other hand, both religious and scientific, 
is that nature is an objective work of God, consummated off- 
hand before recorded history began, and that history is only the 
subsequent subjective fermentation to which this work was liable ; 
so that revelation, if it be admitted at all, cannot be admitted as 
an inherent function of nature and history, but only as a super- 
natural achievement, or an event arbitrarily induced upon natural 
and historic order. 

Swedenborg has not the least intellectual complicity with this 
prejudice. He denies nature to begin with the faintest objectivity 
to the divine mind, or affirms it to be a purely subjective work of 
God in the interest exclusively of man's spiritual evolution. It is, 
in fact, as rigid an involution of the spiritual world — the universe 



88 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

of affection and thought — as the glove is an involution of the hand, 
whose necessities alone call for its existence. And a fortiori, 
therefore, he denies history a natural origination, or turns it from 
a garish flowering of natural principles into an abject seed-place or 
seminary of spiritual truth and goodness, in whose necessities alone 
both it and nature find their sole and equal raison d'etre. Hold- 
ing these views of the essential subserviency both of nature and 
history to the spiritual world, or the evolution of a life divinely 
human, of course the question of a literal revelation could prove 
in no way embarrassing to him, but finds itself, in fact, implicitly 
if not explicitly solved by every word he says. For while he thus 
turns nature and history into an utterly servile correspondence 
or inverse imagery of the infinite divine substance which is al- 
ways latent — in order that it may one day become patent — in 
the finite form of man, he at the same time transmutes all these 
literal so-called " divine revelations," which up to Christ's time 
had diversified the annals of the race, into so many partial 
glimpses of this grand universal verity, into so many premature 
attempts on the part of man to rifle the mystical heart of nature, 
or bring himself, by violence as it were, into accord with the 
great underlying but still unfathomable secret of history. 

It seems to me that an incalculable intellectual advantage 
thus accrues to Swedenborg over the ordinary religionist and 
ordinary rationalist both, in respect to all these mooted points of 
the church's origin and history. What alone makes, and has ever 
made, these questions insoluble is, the pertinacity with which we 
cling to the notion of the church as a positive divine token in 
the earth, and not a mere negative one ; as a nutritive divine 
force in the world, and not a purely purgative one. If then, 
with Swedenborg, we consent to dismiss this irrational concep- 
tion, and come to regard the church as a literal divine lieuten- 
ancy in the interests of the broadest human society or brother- 
hood on earth and in heaven — and bound, therefore, like all 
lieutenancies, to disappear when the true incumbent arrives — 
we see at a glance that it demands no other foundation than 
the instincts of the human heart, no other origination than it is 
sure to find in the free play of men's natural temperament and 
genius. The sole purpose of the church has been to purge the 
earth of its false gods, the gods authenticated by the native 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 89 

arrogance and cupidity of the human heart, by the native igno- 
rance and conceit of the human understanding ; and it carries out 
this purpose of course only by first giving a quasi consecration 
to these low instincts of our nature, and then gradually bending 
and shaping them to higher issues. The rudest literal or sym- 
bolic form of the institution — the shape in which the church 
originally challenges recognition, and which perfectly adapts it 
to the comprehension even of sense* — is the antagonism of a 
select race or family to the rest of mankind. The immemo- 
rial tradition of a divine seed in the earth, struggling for its domin- 
ion with the seed of the evil one, becomes easily appropriated to 
themselves by persons or races of a devout temper, of a fanatical 
genius ; and once appropriated, it is bequeathed of course as a 
sacred inheritance to their offspring. This divine seed had been 
for a long time previous to the christian era identified, to the 
Jewish imagination, with Abraham, the founder of their own 
nation, and with the literal progeny descended from his loins. 
In Christianity this aspect of the church underwent a sheer and 
sudden reversal, the jew being now authoritatively deposed 
from the divine favor, and the gentile reinstated. On what 
ground ? Manifestly that the jew, though distinguished above 
the gentile by the carnal possession of the law, had yet become 
by that very possession spiritually disaffected to its righteous- 
ness beyond all other people, and was hence incapable of reap- 
ing its promised satisfactions in the Christ. 

Accordingly, from this period onward to our own day, the 
name of Christ fills the historic page, and the church founded 
by his apostles assumes to itself the rightful supremacy of the 
whole earth. What estimate does Swedenborg put upon these 

* I can perfectly understand by sensible tuition what all my spiritual culture 
disallows, namely, how one person may be acceptable to God and another abhor- 
rent. I can even understand by that medium, and without any difficulty, bow the 
former person should be myself, and the latter person a man of another race, 
family, or color. For sense of necessity views God as a far more grandly finite 
or selfisb being tban man ; and to be more finite and selfish than man is to be 
devilish ; tbat is, to love or bate all other beings without any reference to their 
objective worth, but simply with reference to their subjective use and advantage to 
one's self. No wonder that religion, with such an incentive, was so rife in early 
times. No wonder that every family, or gens, in early times, boasted its special 
tutelary divinity ; and that the entire gentile world was organized upon the invet- 
erate mutual hostility of all religions, instead of their essential unity. 



90 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG. 

facts ? How does he interpret Christ's personal and official sig- 
nificance ? In what light does he exhibit the christian revela- 
tion — as a final or perfect, or as a transient and imperfect, man- 
ifestation of the divine name ? 

Altogether in the former and higher aspect. Let us see then, 
so far as we are able, on what grounds of reason he does this. 
We need not expect, as I have already said, to find him justify- 
ing himself in a strictly ratiocinative way, or as men deal with 
what they feel to be matter of opinion merely, but affirmatively 
rather, or as they deal with what they feel to be matter of pre- 
cise knowledge. Nevertheless, he supports his affirmations by 
incessant reference to intellectual considerations, as well as by 
illustrations drawn from the recognized principles of common 
sense, or the race's rational experience, so that we need be at 
no loss after all to divine the true grounds of his induction. 



XV. 

We have seen that creation, philosophically viewed, involves 
a divided movement — one descending, generic, physical, by 
which the creature becomes set off, projected, alienated from the 
creator in mineral, vegetable, and animal form ; the other as- 
cending, specific, moral, by which the creature thus naturally 
pronounced becomes conscious of himself as separated from his 
creative source, and instinctively reacts against the fact, or seeks 
to reunite himself with God. Or, we may say that the former 
movement restricts itself to universalizing the creature, by giv- 
ing him identity or community with all other things ; while the 
latter aims to individualize him, by investing him with a con- 
science of selfhood or freedom sensibly distinct from all other 
things.* 

* Hence it is that religion becomes specially addicted to, or cognizant of, this 
latter interest. For religion — from re and ligo, the prefix re in latin verbs hav- 
ing the same loosening or dissolving force as the prefix un in English verbs — 
means the unbinding of those who are in bondage to nature, in bondage to natural 
evil and error, and giving them the freedom which befits the children of God. 
No doubt the subject of nature, knowing as yet no higher objectivity, will be 
very sure to regard the bondage he is thus under as the truest freedom, and to 
look upon religion accordingly as his enemy. But the culprit is notoriously an 
unfair judge of the law; and whether we think well or ill of it, religion itself, 
viewed in its essence, and separated from all ecclesiastical alloy, has never meant 
anything but the enfranchisement of human life in every sphere of its activity. 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBORG. 91 

But this is by no means all that we have seen. We have seen 
besides, that the generic or universalizing force in creation sen- 
sibly dominates its specific or individualizing force ; and this is 
a fact of transcendent importance in its spiritual bearings, or its 
influence upon the development of the church. For it distinctly 
proves thus much, namely, that no direct effort which the moral 
subject makes to readjust himself to his creative source can 
ever spiritually avail him, or boast more than an illusory suc- 
cess ; for the reason that his will is so contingent upon his 
instincts — his moral character so dependent upon his physical 
temperament — that his voluntary activity will always go to 
intensify his finite ties rather than abate them, to enhance his 
conscious remoteness from the infinite rather than abridge it. 
Let us glance, for example, at the beginnings of the religious 
life in man, or his ambition to bring himself personally near to 
the infinite. I feel an instinctive reverence for the divine name 
which disposes me to placate it, or render it personally propi- 
tious to me, by all the means in my power. But if I push this 
disposition beyond certain definite limits, I find myself gradually 
led into such wilderness states — states of frantic self-isolation — 
as brings erelong my inmost but hitherto latent selfishness and 
indifference to my kind into the broad gaze of consciousness, 
and fills me accordingly with any emotions but those of repose 
towards God. What I naturally covet, what all my innocent 
instincts crave, is the greatest possible experience of outward 
good, the greatest possible immunity from outward evil. But 
the moment I put my moral or personal force at the service of 
these instincts, and devoutly aspire to realize them, their inno- 
cence turns to shame in my bosom, and I become conscious — 
of course not intelligently, but sensibly conscious — of a growing 
inward distance from God, which bids fair to engulf all my nas- 
cent personal hopes in despair. I experience, in fact, what is 
properly called " a conscience of sin " ; that is to say, I under- 
go such a sickening, disheartening sense of my utter inward 
disproportion to the infinite goodness, as paralyzes all the joy I 
have ever had in its remembrance. Indeed, so lively a conviction 
besets me, not merely of my actual or chance defilement, but 
of my essential and habitual corruption as illustrated by the light 
of God's holiness, that I feel a distrust and distaste of his once 



92 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

lovely name, hardly stopping short now of an inmost despair and 
hatred. Undoubtedly I cloak these disloyal emotions from my 
own acknowledgment, and even from my own suspicion. So 
sedulous indeed is my zeal in that behalf, that my prayer is sure 
to grow ever more vociferous as the lamp of my hope burns 
dim ; and as my real or inward enmity defines itself, the out- 
ward voice of my praise and adoration puts on an added fervor 
and frequency. 

I need not say to any one who has ever felt a decisive creep 
of its horrors, that a more atrocious anguish than that here 
described as shut up in the religious conscience, wherever that 
conscience exists in its purity,* is unknown to the human bosom ; 
and it all grows out of the fact I am alleging, namely, the 
rigidly conditional nature of the moral consciousness, or the 
circumstance of its dependence for all its inspiration upon the 
finite organization. Man, as we have seen, is essentially a social 
being ; that is to say, he is created both male and female, both 
universal and particular, common and proper, generic and spe- 
cific, physical and moral ; so that it is impossible for the vir (or 
inward man) to individualize himself absolutely to the divine 
regard without, to that extent, prejudicing the homo (or outward 
man), and hence defeating any schemes he may cherish upon 
deity by the very method he takes to carry them out. It is as 
if Eve, being consubstantiate with Adam, should nevertheless 
attempt to bring forth fruit of herself alone, or in spite of his 
concurrence rather than by its favor. It is however just this 
hallucination which according to Swedenborg bases the church 
in man, or underlies his distinctively religious life. The vir, or 
moral subject, enjoys a sensible absoluteness with respect to the 
homo ; that is, he feels himself to be independent of the race, 
or his kind ; and at the beck of this purely sensuous instinct 
(which in scripture symbolism is called the serpent), he aspires 
" to become like God, knowing good and evil " ; that is, to be 
good and wise in himself, irrespectively of his intimate unity or 
solidarity with all mankind. He instinctively aspires, in other 
words, to bring himself near to God, or achieve his spiritual 
safety, by the exercises of a devout self-love ; the invariable 
result being never to lift himself up to divine dimensions, but 
* See Appendix, note C. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 93 

to degrade the deity to his own spiritual stature. Hence that 
life of inward self-abasement or anguish in the human bosom, 
which I have above pictured as constituting the sole spiritual 
reality of the church, the only true life of religion on the earth, 
being the literal descent of the divine to the human nature, and 
which will ultimately bring about that regenerate social senti- 
ment of men on earth and in heaven, which constitutes the 
ascent of the human to the divine nature. 

Let us linger here a little while that we may the more per- 
fectly understand ourselves. 

What in effect I have been saying all along is, that morality 
is not a personal or specific endowment of man, but a rigidly 
natural or generic one.* It is the badge, not of this, that, or 
the other man, but of all men alike, just in so far as they are 
men at all. It characterizes no special subject of human nature, 
but the very nature itself. It is indeed the essence of human 
nature ; the logical differentia between man and the brute ; being 
what characterizes him expressly as man, or in so far as he is 
neither mineral, vegetable, nor animal ; so that no man is a man 
in the proper force of the word, unless he be a moral subject. 

Now if morality be as here alleged the distinctive sign of 
human nature, that is to say, if a man is moral, not by virtue of 
what he is or has in contradistinction to his fellows, but solely 
by virtue of what he is or has in common with all other men, 
it is at once obvious that the moral subject, as such, must straight- 
way disown every spiritual qualification, i. e. disavow any di- 
rect approximation to the infinite, any such approximation as 
does not rigidly presuppose that of his kind. He may claim to 
be spiritually affiliated to God, if he please, but not in his own 

* Certain recent writers, ambitions to rejuvenate ihe old theology by giving it a 
quasi rational sanction, have labored hard to sophisticate this truth, by representing 
morality not as a natural but as a distinctly supernatural fact ; but with no other 
effect than to signalize their own incompetence, since their whole labor is built 
upon a transparent quibble, that of confounding morality with moral goodness, 
so blinking moral evil out of sight. Certainly moral or voluntary goodness ex- 
ists only by the antagonism of like evil ; and if therefore moral good be supernatural 
or claim a divine source, moral evil has every right to be equally exacting. The 
more hardy leaders accordingly in this enterprise do not hesitate virtually to adopt 
the manichean hypothesis of creation, and trace back the existing evil of the 
creature to an " evil possibility " in the divine nature ! See Dr. Bushnell's " Na- 
ture and the Supernatural. " 



94 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

right, and only by virtue of a previous spiritual affiliation of 
the race. In other words, the moral subject is self-debarred the 
least spiritual attainment — the attainment, for example, of any 
such bosom rectitude as argues in him the least legitimate supe- 
riority to his kind, or elevates him above the uniform level of 
human nature. No doubt a fallacious appearance of things is 
apt to drown out the truth upon this subject to a superficial 
observation. No doubt many persons habitually ascribe to 
themselves, and find others ready to justify them in so doing, a 
spiritual rectitude or supernatural merit. But this is only 
because such persons are spiritually below the level of their kind, 
rather than quite up to it, let alone above it. That is to say, it 
is because their intelligence is still childish or rank, is still con- 
trolled by sense in place of being served by it ; or, what is the 
same thing, because they are still in the habit of reasoning as 
children do, from appearance to reality, from without to within, 
and not as cultivated men do, from within to without, or from 
reality to appearance. But the truth utterly and invariably 
rebukes their pretension. The truth utterly falsifies every claim 
the individual man puts forth to a measure of virtue which legit- 
imately reflects the least spiritual discredit upon any other man, 
however conventionally depraved he may be. For it proves our 
moral aspiration in every such case to be the fruit of a strictly 
natural inspiration, the prompting or play in fact of an enven- 
omed self-love ; and in place therefore of justifying our easy 
self-complacency, our habitual self-righteousness, it stamps us 
as at best — or in our highest moral states — only fallaciously 
individualized from our kind, while in reality we are more deeply 
than ever implicated with it. 

But if all this be true ; if it be true that the.wr, which is the 
feminine, specific, or moral element in consciousness, be thus 
invincibly limited by the homo, which is its masculine, generic, 
or physical element ; then it follows, unquestionably, that the 
moral subject as such is inhibited any direct access to, or com- 
merce with, God, and obliged to depend, consequently, for his 
coveted reconciliation with him, upon some redemptive work of 
God, which shall, if possible, revolutionize the constitutional 
order of his consciousness, by making what has hitherto been 
first in it last, and what hitherto has been last first. Notori- 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 95 

ously all divine prophecy or promise has been identified with the 
" seed of the woman," not of the man ; but if the woman be 
inveterately subject to the man — if, in other words, our moral 
power is limited by our physical constitution — how shall these 
grand immemorial prophecies ever be fulfilled ? Manifestly 
only in one way ; by the actual regeneration of nature, which 
means the marriage of the homo and the vir, or its male and 
female elements ; which again means the eternal unification of 
the distinctively human element in consciousness, with its dis- 
tinctively cosmical element ; which still again means the per- 
fect humanization henceforward, or exaltation to exclusively 
human form, of mineral, vegetable, and animal substance. 

Now this perfect marriage of "the male and female elements 
in creation — this complete unification or equalization of the 
homo and the vir, of the cosmical and the domestic soul — man- 
ifestly appeals for its realization to the advent of a true society 
or fellowship among men. It is only in the race's social evolu- 
tion that our absolute and our contingent interests become har- 
monized ; that our physical interests, which are those of force 
or necessity, put on an altogether conciliatory aspect towards 
our moral interests, which are those of freedom or pleasure. 
In a true society or brotherhood of men, and in this alone, our 
organic appetites and passions, which constitute the realm of 
necessity or force in us (so linking us with the outward and 
finite), freely defer to our rational affections and thoughts, which 
constitute the realm of freedom in us (so linking us with the 
inward and infinite). But human society, human brotherhood, 
human equality, is the slowest fruit of the ages, is indeed the 
culminating truth of human destiny, and comes to consciousness 
in the race, as we have already seen, only when the race shall 
have definitively exhausted its domestic, its civic, and its politi- 
cal consciousness. Meanwhile what shall take the place of so- 
ciety, or proclaim itself its true vicegerent, so keeping the crea- 
tive name and order temporarily alive in the earth, if not the 
church ; that is to say, that purely formal or provisional society, 
that purely representative fellowship or brotherhood of man 
with man, which has hitherto alone claimed a divine institution 
upon the earth ? 

Thus the church itself, according to Swedenborg, is no finality, 



96 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

but a mere providential lieutenancy, instituted in the interests 
exclusively of the divine righteousness, which is universal jus- 
tice upon the earth ; such justice or righteousness being identi- 
cal with human society, which means the frank and cordial 
fellowship or equalization of every man of woman born, not 
only with every other man, but with all other men put together, 
and of all men consequently with each individual man. He 
found, by the opening of his spiritual sight, or his discovery 
of the interior contents of revelation, that the sole reality or 
justification of the church lay in the spiritual use it promotes 
as a divine menstruum or sieve, to sift out the wheat of human 
nature from its chaff, or separate its nutritive from its waste 
material. The wheat of humankind, spiritually regarded, are 
those who acknowledge God's natural humanity, or give 
man the primary place in the divine counsels, nature and history 
a secondary and derivative one. In other words, they hold man 
to be no longer the finite subject, but the divine or infinite ob- 
ject of all created order. And its chaff, of course, are those 
who take the opposite view, or remain pertinaciously addicted to 
the inspiration of sense, which teaches that nature and history 
are a divine finality, or substance in themselves, when in truth 
they are a mere sensuous correspondence of the absolute divine 
substance which is latent exclusively in the human form. 

The importance of the sifting function thus assigned by Swe- 
denborg to the church, in its bearing upon the spiritual creation, 
or the universe of human affection and thought, cannot be ex- 
aggerated, when we consider that God is the sole substance of 
that universe ; and that livingly to acknowledge him, therefore, 
or to have our will and understanding inwardly open to the 
access of his goodness and truth, is no less essential to our spir- 
itual existence, than to be nourished by food capable of assimi- 
lation to our flesh and blood is essential to our natural existence. 
We shall not be surprised, accordingly, at the immense intel- 
lectual significance Swedenborg puts upon the church, when 
he represents it as promoting the same vital uses to the race's 
spiritual body, that the heart promotes to man's natural body. 
As the heart has a double office to fulfil, first a death-bearing 
and then a life-giving one, so the church, according to Sweden- 
borg, has both a literal and a spiritual aspect, both a body and a 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG. 97 

soul ; the former allying us with hell, the latter alone with 
heaven. As the heart attracts to itself the vitiated blood of the 
body, gross, lifeless, blackened with the foul humors discharged 
into it through its long circuit, so exactly the church, as the 
spiritual heart of mankind, attracts to itself, in its outward or 
visible form, by the heavenly sanctions or lures it holds out to 
our personal ambition and avarice, the most selfish, the most 
despotic, the most worldly tempers among men. And as the 
heart, having gathered the corrupt or debilitated blood of the 
body to its embrace, makes haste to hand it over to the lungs to 
be defecated, washed, and renewed for use by contact with the 
atmosphere, so in like manner the church, in spiritually or in- 
wardly reacting against the ungodly influences which as a car- 
nal economy it attracts, becomes itself renovated or washed 
clean of defilement, shakes off its waste deciduous members, 
purges itself, in other words, of all subjective aims and preten- 
sions, by identifying itself ever more and more only with God's 
impersonal and objective uses to all mankind. In short, it be- 
comes convertible with heaven ; heaven being a state of culture 
in man in which charity or regard for others claims the first 
place, and prudence or regard for self takes the second place. 
The entire history of the church, by Swedenborg's showing, 
amounts to this, neither more nor less, namely : such a sheer 
humiliation on its literal or ritual side of the creative name to 
the lowest level of men's carnal pride and concupiscence, as in- 
fallibly begets in the gentile conscience, or common mind of the 
race, an inmost indifference and aversion to all consecrated au- 
thority, to all private or personal sanctity, to all exceptional or 
privileged worth, and leads it eventually to associate God's living 
honor and worship only with the reverence of every individual 
man, however conventionally " common or unclean." 

No one, of course, can be expected to do justice to Sweden- 
borg's spiritual physiology, unless he constantly remind himself 
that heaven and hell are only the sharply contrasted processes of 
nutrition and waste, which go to the formation of the maximus 
homo, the lord, or divine natural man, and hence bear a strict 
proportion to the varying states of the church on earth. So 
long as the truth of the divine natural humanity, or of God's 
strictly creative presence in our nature and history, is scientif 



9b THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

ically ignored by the human understanding, being at most only 
representatively avouched by the church, human life must ne- 
cessarily exhibit a more or less conflicting aspect in every sphere 
of its activity. And when this conflict becomes at last intolera- 
ble, that is to say, when the principle of authority in the church 
(faith) becomes so envenomed and insolent as actually to over- 
bear the free principle (charity), instant equilibrium ensues in 
" the world of spirits " (as Swedenborg names that province of 
the maximus homo which answers to the stomach in the finite 
organization), by an additionally stringent separation of evil 
spheres from good ; or, what is the same thing, a freer elimina- 
tion and excretion of the waste substances of the spiritual body. 
The existence of hell, as a spiritual phenomenon, marks a su- 
perfluous divine energy in the earth ; that is to say, an energy 
not as yet fully wrought into the tissue of human nature, not as 
yet fully authenticated and utilized by the tenor of our daily 
life, and liable to come forth consequently in perverse and dis- 
orderly modes of manifestation. As long as men believe in the 
unconditioned nature of morality, and therefore atti'ibute to 
themselves a selfhood or freedom no less absolute in truth or 
reality than it is in fact or appearance, so long, of course, they 
will be unable to recognize the truth of the divine natural hu- 
manity ; and while this truth remains unrecognized, men must 
continue to eat of the tree of finite knowledge, or hold good 
and evil to be essentially irreconcilable. That hell (or self- 
love) in this state of things should be allowed freely to precipi- 
tate itself from heaven therefore, and come under the permanent 
though unconscious subjection of the latter, is as much a pro- 
vision of cosmical order or spiritual hygiene, as the separation 
of the waste matters of the body from our houses, and their 
incarceration in appropriate receptacles, is a provision of civic 
order or domestic hygiene. No doubt the church will one day 
lay off her tattered grave-clothes, the tarnished livery of death 
in which her persistent devotion to the letter of truth exclu- 
sively has hitherto bound her, and put on her resurrection gar- 
ments in the acknowledgment of the divine natural humanity, 
or of God's living presence and power in every form of human 
life, whether conventionally sacred or profane, celestial or infer- 
nal. Then the church will have learned to disown all private 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 99 

ends, all purposes of self-seeking, whatsoever makes its interests 
as now alien to those of the secular or common life of man ; 
will have learned, in short, to identify herself with the broadest 
human society or fellowship. At that time I presume the selfish 
or hellish element in our nature will have become so completely 
harmonized with the equitable or heavenly element, by their 
joint and equal subjugation to the uses of the divine natural 
humanity, which are the ends exclusively of a unitary society 
or universal fellowship among men, that no scientific but only a 
purely philosophic discrimination of hell from heaven will be 
any longer possible. That is to say, the mind of spiritual or 
philosophic culture alone will recognize hell, and that no longer 
as denoting a particular style of persons in humanity incapable 
of celestial assimilation, but as denoting the very principle of 
personality or selfhood in man universally, considered as abso- 
lute or independent. The christian hells, regarded as antag- 
onizing the heavens, will thenceforth be " shut up," as Swe- 
denborg describes the fate of the antediluvian hells, by minis- 
tering to no further scientific human use. Use is the only oxy- 
gen that ever kindled their lurid glow, and this being taken 
away, they must of sheer necessity collapse, become extinct, 
die out, just as a fire dies out deprived of vent. The church 
has now become elevated out of ritual into living dimensions ; it 
is no longer a representative, but a real human society or broth- 
erhood in heaven and on earth ; and the evil principle in our 
nature (self-love) being thus shorn of its malignity by be- 
coming reconciled to charity the good principle, constitutes 
in fact henceforth the truly divine and invincible guaranty of 
social tranquillity and order.* 

* "It is a point of faith," says Swedenborg, "common both to the old and new 
dispensation, that the lord came into the world to remove hell from man, and that he 
effected this end by combats with and victories over it, so subduing it to himself, 
or making it forever orderly and obedient." — True Christian Religion, 2. Again 
he describes the "particular" faith of the new heavens and the new earth in 
human nature thus : " God is essential goodness and truth, and he manifested him- 
self in Christ for the purpose of reducing all things in heaven, in hell, and in the 
church (or representative earth) to order, because at that period the power of hell 
or evil had got a greater purchase upon the human mind than that of heaven or 
good, and hence menaced a total destruction. This menace was averted by the 
lord's humanity, which was the divine truth (or manifested form of the divine 
good), and hence angels and men became alike redeemed." — lb., 3. See Appendix, 
note D. 



100 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBOEG. 



XVI. 



But the urgent question before us, towards the solution of 
which we have been all along steadfastly tending, is, How do 
the hells become actually " removed from man," as Swedenborg 
teaches us they must be, in order to the true revelation of the 
divine name ? How, in other words, is the transition histor- 
ically effected from the representative to the real church, that so 
we may know God no longer at second hand, or reflectively, 
but directly, or as we know ourselves ? An obvious gulf sep- 
arates the two churches ; one being lifeless shadow, the other 
living substance; and what is capable of spanning it? The 
representative church exhibits the vir, or feminine element in 
consciousness, hopelessly subject to the homo, or masculine ele- 
ment ; ^ exhibits the distinctively human element in existence, 
which is that of individuality hopelessly immersed in the cos- 
mical element, which is that of identity ; and the antagonism, 
consequently, of Abel and Cain, of goodness and truth, of 
heart and head, of heaven and hell, in the human bosom, be- 
comes of necessity indefinitely perpetuated. For so long as the 
woman in us is subject to the man — i. e. so long as our moral 
force is under the coercion of our physical necessities, and our 
distinctively human genesis refers itself, consequently, not to a 
divine or infinite source, but to what is merely mineral, vegetable, 
and animal in us — it is impossible that we should ever attain to 
true or spiritual individuality ; and without this, of course, the 
only heaven capable of being formed is not " formed out of the 
human race," as Swedenborg says, but only out of infants and 
persons of a feeble moral force, whom the divine providence 
with infinite address constrains to their own advantage. 

The new or real church reverses this state of things, or allows 
a heaven to be formed no longer out of the mere debris or off- 
scouring of humanity, but out of the very race itself, bv avouch- 
ing henceforth, not the antagonism but the marriage of the 
homo and the vir, the man and the woman. The new or final 
church, the fruit of God's long travail in our nature, exhibits 
the distinctively feminine and spiritual element in life, no longer 
in bondage to the masculine and material element, but rising 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 101 

superior to it, or conceiving and bringing forth directly of the 
infinite. For the new church is not a representative church, but 
a real one ; allowing no priesthood but that of the lord, or 
divine natural man, in whom alone we all live and move and 
have our being ; nor any instituted rites and ordinances, but 
those living ones which are inspired by the sentiment of the 
broadest human society, fellowship, or equality. The new and 
final church of God on earth is indeed identical on its literal 
side with this secular society or fellowship, and whosoever re- 
spires the social spirit — whosoever in heart acknowledges the 
grand essential brotherhood or equality of man with man, in 
spite of their petty or obvious moral inequalities — is in full 
spiritual communion with that church, and may securely aspire 
to enjoy whatsoever blessedness it has to offer either in this 
world or that to come. No hell can be bred of such a church 
accordingly. For the social evolution of human destiny means 
— and practically, or in fundamentals, it means nothing what- 
ever but this — such a thorough reconciliation, or marriage, in 
new forms of use of the two hitherto warring principles of force 
and freedom, self-love and charity, truth and goodness, as that 
their fruit shall henceforth be one and identical, or equally tend 
to the highest possible potentialization of human society. To 
the mind of the new or true church, hell can only signify a 
reasoned or confirmed denial of the divine natural humanity ; 
but our coming social evolution bars out the very possibility of 
such denial, by putting the senses themselves on the side of that 
truth, or bribing them to a more free and easy appreciation of it 
than is yielded even by the soul : though of course they will 
have no similar insight into its profound and comprehensive 
spiritual scope. 

Such is the apparently hopeless conflict between the old and 
the new — the ritual and the real — church in humanity. How 
then, I repeat, does the chasm between the two become histori- 
cally filled up, so as that hell may at last be " removed from 
man," and the divine name consequently be hallowed, the divine 
kingdom come, and the divine will be done as in heaven so also 
on the earth — as in the spiritual world so also in the natural ? 
The obvious difficulty, as we have seen, in the way of this historic 
consummation is the limitation of human morality, or the im- 



102 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

possibility of any man so far outgrowing the restraints of his 
hereditary consciousness, or his subjection to nature, as to feel 
himself really one with the infinite goodness, in spite of all ap- 
pearances to the contrary. Our moral force is a strictly natural 
or hereditary one, and cannot rise above its source. In other 
words, our self-consciousness links us exclusively with the natural 
or material side of life, with what gives us subjective existence, 
or renders us phenomenal to ourselves ; and to that extent, 
alienates us from the spiritual or paternal side of life, from what 
gives us objective being, or allies us with God : so that we have, 
as it were, inwardly to die — to undergo a conscious death to 
ourselves — before we can become emancipated from the shackles 
of the finite, and rise into the living discernment and participa- 
tion of our true or infinite being. Self-consciousness restricts 
our regard to the apparent differences which separate us from 
other men, the differences which are obvious to sense ; and 
never leads us to suspect accordingly that these superficial 
differences are only so many evidences of our profound sub- 
stantial identity with all other men. We seem to our own eyes 
altogether different from others, now much better, now much 
worse. But this seeming is wholly shut up to our own shallow 
perception ; the truth of the case being all the while that our 
conscious differences, the judgments of good and evil we apply 
to our own character, are only so many modulations of one 
identical moral substance, so many variations of one original 
theme. Freedom, selfhood, moral force, is our generic, not onr 
specific qualification. It belongs to us each, only in so far as it 
first belongs to our kind, its whole end and purpose being to 
ascertain that kind, or vindicate its universality : first, by dis- 
engaging it from all lower kinds ; and then by turning these 
latter from an apparently creative into an abjectly constitutive 
relation to it, or making them out of its incompetent tyrannical 
masters into its assiduous, obsequious servants. How is it even 
conceivable then, that you, or I, or any man, should ever so far 
disown this hereditary thraldom, this moral incarceration, or 
identification with his race, as really to emerge in spiritual life, 
and find himself in direct hand-to-hand commerce Avith the in- 
finite ? The pretension is manifestly preposterous. And yet 
the total problem of creation, about which alone the light of 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 103 

revelation revolves, is not to be solved short of the practical 
reconciliation of that contradiction. That is to say, somewhere 
in the progress of history some vir must be found able to 
transcend these hereditary moral limitations, or personally uni- 
versalize himself to the dimensions of the homo, so bringing him- 
self into conscious oneness with the infinite ; or else the mar- 
riage of nature and man, of the homo and the vir, of the cos- 
mos and the earth, must remain forever unconsummated, and 
human society turn out, not an eternal monument of the in- 
finite divine love, but an abortive effort of his wdiolly incommen- 
surate wisdom and power. 

On Swedenborg's ontological principles, or intellectual method, 
as we have already to some extent seen, nothing is more practi- 
cable than the perfect solution of this problem. Undoubtedly 
his method affronts our sensuous prejudices, sacred and profane, 
religious and scientific. But this circumstance should rather 
conciliate than avert our respect, when we consider to what a 
complete blind-alley our intellectual prejudices of both sorts are 
bringing us : the devotee being afraid to trust his scientific in- 
stincts, lest his faith suffer shipwreck ; and the sceptic being 
equally afraid to confide in his religious instincts, lest his knowl- 
edge undergo eclipse. Take any two men of equal culture who 
represent the existing reciprocal jealousy of science and faith, 
say Strauss and Neander, or Mill and Mansel. Can any one 
be so infatuated, or, as the phrase is, so good-natured, as to sup- 
pose that, between minds so mutually balanced or reciprocally 
limited as these, any reconciliation is possible upon the data 
already tediously trite and common to them both, that is, with- 
out some altogether new philosophic insight? Credat Judceus 
Apella, non ego. And if this hope has grown simply desperate, 
how incumbent is it upon all men of sense and uprightness who 
suffer from our existing mental chaos, to seek help wherever 
they can find it, even, if need be, at so unpromising a source as 
the books of Swedenborg ! 

I have already shown to some extent in what way Sweden- 
borg helps the intellect, but much still remains behind ; and in 
order to do the fullest possible justice to the subject, it is neces- 
sary that I define, even still more exactly than I have yet done, 
the prevalent but deep-seated and unsuspected intellectual mal- 
ady which so piteously invokes divine medication. 



104 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 



Jew and Greek, devotee and sceptic, churchman and states- 
man, Mansel and Mill in short, perfectly agree in this, that the 
realm of nature is essentially objective to man, and not merely 
contingently so. That is to say, they hold that nature is not 
alone sensibly objective to him, as furnishing the proper ground 
of his experience or knowledge, but also rationally objective to 
him, as furnishing the definite goal of his beliefs ; so that when 
any event occurs, like the alleged birth of Christ from a virgin, 
or his resurrection from death, to embarrass or cripple his habit- 
ual belief, neither one nor the other ever dreams of resenting 
the wholly arbitrary limitation thus put upon his intellect, but 
both alike pusillanimously acquiesce in it, the only difference 
between them meanwhile being, that Mr. Mansel timidly hastens 
to save his faith by renouncing his reason, and Mr. Mill to save 
his reason by renouncing his faith. The event, according to Mr. 
Mansel, transcends rational or scientific explanation, being ad- 
dressed, not to our intelligence, but to our credulity, or instinct 
of devout awe and wonder ; while Mr. Mill, on the other hand, 
declares it to be incredible and inadmissible on any hypothesis 
whatever, simply because it is unintelligible, or violates the 
fundamental canons of the understanding ; and when the under- 
standing is obliged to be paralyzed or set at naught to begin with 
in divine things, it is of no practical moment whether we admit 
or reject them, since in either case alike our action is sure to be 
frivolous, unmeaning, and unmanly. 

Clearly then the sceptic and the devotee both alike maintain, 
in effect, that nature constitutes the legitimate object of which 
man is the subject; that it furnishes the inevitable boundary 
both of his sensible and his intellectual experience. And this 
is only saying, in other words, that he is essentially finite, and 
not merely existential^ so ; finite not merely on his maternal or 
constitutional side, wherein he stands related to nature and his 
fellow-man, but also on his paternal or creative side, wherein 
he stands related to culture or to spiritual goodness and truth. 
Not merely are we finite, according to these disputatious gentle- 
men, on the side of our consciousness, or as we phenomenally 
exist in ourselves, but we are equally finite also on our uncon- 
scious side, or as we really are in God. For if I am nature's 
unqualified subject— if I am her subject in an absolute as well 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 105 

as a contingent sense, inwardly no less than outwardly, ration- 
ally as well as sensibly, specifically, or in all those respects 
wherein I am individualized from my kind, no less than gener- 
ically, or in all those respects wherein I am identified with it — 
why then the manifest inference from such a state of things is, 
that I am not only apparently but essentially finite ; finite in 
myself and finite in my source ; finite in body and finite in soul ; 
naturally finite and spiritually finite ; in short, both actually and 
really, which means hopelessly and irremediably, finite. 

We may say then that our prevalent intellectual malady, as 
measured against Swedenborg's robust sanity, consists in low and 
sensuous conceptions of the relation between man and God, or in 
a spiritual ignorance on the part of our religious and scientific 
guides, amounting to fatuity. And this statement, while it pre- 
pares us to estimate the advantage which Swedenborg's books 
will eventually confer upon true faith and true science — that is, 
upon a faith divorced from superstition, and a science divorced 
from sense — will also enable us to discern that precise and pro- 
found intellectual significance in them, which insures meanwhile 
that they shall prove a downright odium to Mr. Mansel, a down- 
right folly to Mr. Mill. 



XVII. 

The first thing accordingly that strikes you in looking to 
Swedenborg for light upon this inglorious contention of faith 
and science, is that he palpably overlooks it, or takes no appar- 
ent interest in its fluctuating fortunes. But a second more 
attentive look explains this indifference, since it exhibits him 
industriously bent upon vacating or exhausting the conceded intel- 
lectual foundations, upon which alone such an unfriendly rivalry 
becomes either possible or conceivable. If you pay attention to 
what you read, you will easily hear him saying in effect or sub 
voce to both parties : " Your dispute, gentlemen, admits of no 
decision, but prorogues itself to an ever-indefinite future, because 
you are both alike destitute of that true intellectual insight — 
based upon a spiritual apprehension of creation — which alone 
can enable you to settle it, and are left meanwhile to espouse 
any plausible interest which happens to enlist your hereditary 



106 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

prejudices. You both alike maintain in truth, whatever you 
may do in fact, that nature is the limit, not the starting-point, of 
creation ; that it is the controlling end, not the servile means or 
pliant method, of the creative power: the consequence being 
that you, Mr. Mansel, from your point of view, have no occasion 
for a god who is not the jealous and implacable rival of nature ; 
nor you, Mr. Mill, from your point of view, ar^ occasion for one 
who is not its unlimited servant, its idle and abject tool." 

The regeneration, then, which Swedenborg's spiritual dis- 
closures bring to faith and to science quite equally consists in a 
totally new conception of the creative power, whereby, on the 
one hand, nature, or the cosmos, is turned from an objective 
into -a subjective work of God, which alone it is ; and man, on 
the other hand, is turned from a subjective work of God, which 
he is not, into an objective work, which alone he truly is. 

Swedenborg's ontological starting-point, as we have seen all 
along, is that the life of man in nature is but an appearance, 
whereof the lord, or divine natural man, is the sole reality. 
To be sure, we habitually appropriate to ourselves an absolute or 
independent status, a freedom or selfhood unqualifiedly our 
own, which invests us to our own imaginations with an exclusive 
and inalienable property in our actions. And the creative 
wisdom, intent upon the interests of our natural renovation, of 
our eventual flesh-and-blood resurrection, which is our ultimate 
social evolution, mercifully authenticates this illusion meanwhile 
by endowing it with the sanctions of conscience, or suffering it 
to beget the provisional discrimination of heaven and hell in 
human character. But apart from this incidental or contingent 
use, the thing is all the while a gross hallucination. The time 
or spiritual creation ignores the sentiment of morality in its 
subjects, i. e. disallows the distinction of good and evil among 
men, as at all pertinent to the divine mind.* No angel that 

* " People who are destitute of charity," says Swedenborg, " continually con- 
temn and condemn others, save in so far as prudence constrains them to put on 
friendly manners. But they who are in charity can scarcely see another's evils ; on 
the contrary, while they note all that is good and true in him, they interpret what- 
soever is evil and false in a favorable sense. This disposition they derive from the 
lord, who turns all evil into good. The lord is as far from cursing and 
being angry with men, as heaven is far from earth. For who can conceive that the 
omniscient and omnipotent ruler of the universe, who is infinitely above all 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 107 

Swedenborg encountered was ever so foolish as to attribute the 
good which was visible in him to himself ; and no devil was ever 
wise enough not to do so. The fundamental difference, in short, 
between Swedenborg's angels and devils was the difference 
between humility and loftiness ; the latter always cherishing an 
unsubdued selfhood, or pride of character, the former being 
always more or less cultivated out of it. 

How does this ontological postulate of Swedenborg justify 
itself? On what ground are we entitled to regard our moral 
consciousness as a sheer fallacy of the sensuous understanding, 
save in so far as it is redeemed to truth by its uses to the 
spiritual evolution of human destiny ? On the ground of its 
being a distinctly generic, and not a specific endoivment of the 
subject ; or because it is what he has in strict community with his 
hind, and not, as he himself fondly conceives, in distinction from 
it. Morality is the common possession of human nature just as 
inertia is a common possession of the mineral nature, growth 
of the vegetable, and motion of the animal, and utterly scorns, 
therefore, our private appropriation. That we do nevertheless 
privately appropriate it, is no presumption against the truth, but 
only a presumption of our ignorance of the truth. We habit- 
ually attribute to ourselves an absolute freedom, or personality ; 
we habitually fancy that we are something in ourselves, not only 
generically, or as we stand identified with all other men, but 
also, and much more, specifically, or as we stand individualized 
from them ; and are in no way surprised to learn accordingly 
from our foolish teachers and preachers, that we have each of us 
an absolutely good or evil status in God's sight, and must be 
prepared to expect his everlasting personal approbation or dis- 
approbation. But all this is stigmatized by Swedenborg's higher 
spiritual insight as the grovelling wisdom of the serpent, or as 
the dictate of a purely sensuous intelligence, which makes 
natural fact or appearance a direct measure of spiritual truth 
or reality, and not the rigidly inverse one which alone it is.* 

infirmity, should be angry with such poor and wretched dust as men are, who 
scarcely know anything they do, and can do nothing, of their own motion, but what 
is evil ? There is nothing in the lord disposing him to anger, but only to mercy." — 
A. C 1079, 1080, 1093. 

* " Neither angel nor devil," says Swedenborg, " has the least inherent power ; 
if they had the least particle, heaven would crumble to pieces, hell become a chaos, 



108 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

While this immature mental condition of the race endures, God 
appears to our imagination as altogether like ourselves, only in 
aggravated form ; that is, as an intensely finite or personal 
being, a supreme self-lover in short, gracious to those that please 
him, and hateful to those who displease him ; so that heaven and 
hell (or a pronounced spiritual separation of mankind into sheep 
and goats) become an inevitable provisional necessity of human 
freedom. 

What morality is, then, is very plain. It is the badge of 
human nature, the point of difference between man as man and 
all lower existences. And what morality — being what it 
actually is — really or spiritually means, i. e. what it implies with 
respect both to man's origin and destiny, is also becoming plain. 
It does not mean the aggrandizement of this, that, or the other 
petty person, but the aggrandizement of human nature itself to 
truly divine dimensions. It means the divinization, not of this, 
that, or the other vir, or specific man, but of the homo, or generic 
man, which is humanity itself, and its investiture with infinite 
attributes. It contemplates the exaltation of humanity itself out 
of those purely subjective and constitutional limitations of good 
and evil, wise and silly, great and small, celestial and infernal, 
bred of the vir, or specific man, into objective and unitary pro- 
portions, or the consciousness of its proper infinitude, as a 
universal human society or brotherhood. This is the distinction 
of the human from all lower forms of existence, whether 
mineral, vegetable, or animal, that it is a social form, which 
means that its two component elements of genus and species, 
of identity and difference, are essentially matched or mated, 
and therefore eternally invoke each other, or seek a more free 
and intimate experimental union. It is a composite, not a simple 
form, and therefore disowns the mere concubinage which binds 
together the component elements of lower natures, while it 

and with these every man would cease to exist." — Athanasian Creed, 34. " I once 
heard a celestial voice saying, that if a spark of life in man were his own, and not 
exclusively of God in him, heaven could not exist, nor anything belonging to 
heaven ; hence, no church on earth, and consequently no eternal life." — Intercourse 
of Soul and Body, 11. " The angels think that no man has a grain of will or pru- 
dence which is properly his own ; they say that if he had, heaven and hell would no 
longer hold together, and the whole haman race would perish." — Divine Prov- 
idence, 293. 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 109 

makes marriage the very law of its existence. It is a form 
which presents in itself the intensest objective unity or harmony 
of two forces, which in all subjective aspects are as dispropor- 
tionate and irreconcilable as heaven and hell, namely, an 
infinite creative force, and a finite constitutive one : one being, 
in reference to the other, merely generic or quantifying, and 
therefore regarded as relatively mean or base ; the other, again, 
with respect to that, specific or qualifying, and therefore re- 
garded as relatively high or honorable. No such marriage 
relation as this obtains out of human nature. No such society, 
fellowship, or equality is ever felt between the generic tiger and 
the specific tiger. The specific tiger is wholly incapable of 
respecting his kind as he respects himself, or loving his brother 
tiger's advantage no less than he loves his own. No animal, 
much less any vegetable or mineral, of course, has ever betrayed, 
since time began, any evidence of a social sentiment, any evi- 
dence of a higher objectivity than the indulgence of his selfish 
instincts. No animal has ever exhibited the faintest evidence of 
an inward conflict between his instinct and his aspiration, be- 
tween his inherited nature and his acquired culture. In short, 
no animal ever displays any traces of the existence or operation 
of conscience, which is pre-eminently the citadel of the social 
sentiment — the sentiment which makes us feel the fellowship 
or equality of our kind, and which may be called therefore the 
sentiment of Jcind-ness. Kindness is unknown except to the 
human bosom, and consequently worship, which alone elevates a 
man above himself. Occasionally, no doubt, a dog or a horse, 
subjected to a regimen of fear, evinces an apprehension of chastise- 
ment at its master's hands ; and many a man, subjected to a like 
tyrannical discipline, proves to this extent a good horse or dog. 
But no dog or horse, since the foundation of the world, ever 
so far humiliated itself to his master as inwardly to condemn 
itself, or feel a conscience of sin, for doing the will of the flesh 
in lieu of its master's will. And consequently, no worshipful, 
but only a mercenary relation binds the former to the latter.* 

* No doubt the dog often exhibits a helpless attachment to the person of its 
master ; bat this is not because of a human quality in the dog, but because of a 
canine quality in the master. The dog, in every such case, feels himself and loves 
himself in the master ; he feels, of course, not intelligently but instinctively, how 
grateful this fierce unreasoning devotion of his to his master's person proves to the 



110 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 

But human nature differs toto ccelo in this respect from all 
lower natures, being essentially reverential or worshipful. A re- 
lation, not of chance concubinage or lust, but of chaste wedded 
love, subsists between its generic and specific elements ; a strict 
marriage unity, proceeding first upon no accord, but upon the 
frankest subjective discord, of the homo and the vir, or the cosmical 
and the domestic element in consciousness, and then upon their cor- 
dial objective harmony and co-operation. But how is this essen- 
tial marriage in humanity ever to become actual or prolific, so 
long as the parties to it are forever held asunder as they are in 
the old or representative church, and never personally confronted 
or brought together ? This was the impediment forever inter- 
posed by the ritual economy, that it estranged the human 
from the divine, the vir from the homo, the bride from the 
bridegroom, or perpetually postponed their nuptials. That 
economy formally authenticated the subjective or phenomenal 
disagreement of the homo and the vir, of the cosmical and 
the domestic element in consciousness, and this was all it 
did ; for it lisped no word, except symbolically, of their 
prospective objective and real unity. It exhibits the vir or 
specific element in consciousness (represented by the jew), 
blindly seeking to coerce the homo, or generic masculine element 
(represented by the gentile), into its bondage, instead of irresist- 
ibly attracting its love and homage by every graceful, tender, 
endearing art. In other words, religion in its literal form is an 
extremely ascetic maiden, organizing a passionate warfare be- 
tween our physical and our moral interests, between the element 
of fate or necessity and the element of freedom in our nature, or 
suspending our eternal beatitude upon the degree in which we 
have previously subjugated our flesh to our spirit, our bodies to 
our souls.* Whereas the true tie between flesh and spirit, as 

inmost pride of the latter ; how it soothes his self-love to be thus singled out from 
other men, and served without reference to his human or social, but only to his 
absolute or selfish, worth. Thus the dog does not by any means love and serve 
its master because the latter is so far man, but only because he is so far dog. 
Take a man who has been spiritually cultivated out of his aboriginal cynicism — 
or his merely mineral, vegetable, and animal consciousness, and no dog will be 
found attaching itself to him ; for the simple reason that it will not find enough 
of the canine quality remaining in such a master to foster and reward its K.^ach- 
ment. 

* The Jewish law was admirably contrived accordingly, by its peculiar atoning 



THE SECRET OP SWEDENBOEG. Ill 

avouched by religion in its living or fulfilled form, is a marriage 
tie, which is one of essential freedom on both sides, owning no 
obligation but the spontaneous consent of the parties, and dis- 
owning force as intensely impertinent on either side. How get 
over this impediment then, so as at last to reconcile truth and fact, 
hitherto so utterly irreconcilable, and bring creator and creature, 
infinite and finite, into conscious unity ? 

Evidently only by the decease of man's ritual conscience to- 
wards God, and its resurrection in real or living form ; that is, 
by revolutionizing his consciousness to such an extent as that 
what has hitherto claimed the first place in it, as appearing to be 
properly objective, or infinite and divine (namely, the external 
or generic element, the macrocosm, or homo), shall henceforth 
take the last place, and confess itself altogether subjective or 
finite and human : while what has hitherto been accorded only 
the last place, as appearing strictly subjective or human and 
finite (namely, the internal or specific element, the microcosm, 
or w), shall henceforth claim the first place in it, and avouch 
itself altogether objective, or divine and infinite : the indispen- 
sable pivot of this great historic revolution being, according to 
Swedenborg, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Let rne briefly but clearly indicate the leading intellectual 
grounds of this necessity. 



XVIII. 

There is no such thing possible on Swedenborg's intellectual 
principles as miracle, in the conventional sense of that word ; that 
is, no such thing as an outside divine interference with the order 
of nature : because nature, which exists only as an implication 
of man, affords but an inverse witness of God ; such a witness 

ordinances and its perpetual implication of personal uncleanness in its votary, to 
suggest to every one of the least spiritual insight how futile this moral aspiration 
on our part is, since it is invariably energized by a carnal spirit, or is all the while 
pursuing really fleshly ends hy apparently ascetic methods. This being the exact 
inward condition of the Jewish church (and that church represents the distinctively 
religious conscience of man everywhere) — namely, that its zeal for sound morality 
was a mere cloak to its real unconscious immersion in all manner of carnal cupidity 
and uncleanness — it is not surprising that it outwardly at last, or corresponden- 
tially, fell under the roman yoke, which symbolizes the unbridled worldliness or 
ambition of the human bosom. 



112 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

as restricts his direct presence and activity to the dimensions of 
moral or distinctively human form. The birth of Christ, for 
example, for the simple reason that it involves a departure from 
the seeming order of nature, has always been reckoned an essen- 
tially disorderly event, complicating the even tenor of existence 
by an outside or personal divine interference. It was a new 
thing under the sun, and as no one understood the grounds of it, 
or had the least intelligent perception of nature's being a mere 
mask of God's creative presence and power exclusively in 
man, the event which came especially charged with the revela- 
tion of that truth has remained, intellectually speaking, almost 
wholly inert and inoperative down to Swedenborg's day, if 
indeed it has not been usually interpreted in a sense exactly 
contrary to the truth. Swedenborg regards it on the other 
hand as the supremely normal event of history, the only posi- 
tive revelation of law that ever took place, law infinite and eter- 
nal, or, what is the same thing, creative ; the orbit of the law 
being for this very reason so vast and comprehensive as to 
defy scientific calculation, and adjourn its rational recognition to 
that enlargement and renovation of the common mind of the 
race which is coincident with our perfected social evolution. 
The event, though habitually ascribed to supernatural inter- 
ference, if not indeed to influences contrary to nature, was 
in truth the spontaneous flowering of nature ; only of nature 
in a sense so consummate, in a sense so grand and universal, 
as to be utterly beyond the ken either of a superstitious faith, 
or a sensuous science, and as to impress the votaries of both 
alike, consequently, as the realm of the vague, the unin- 
telligible, the miraculous. For this great truth of the incar- 
nation brings the spiritual universe itself within the realm of 
nature, i. e. nature elevated to human or moral form, since it 
proves our highest inward possibilities to be rigidly conditioned 
upon the due and orderly satisfaction of our humblest outward 
necessities. It in fact turns angel and seraph — nay, the infi- 
nite majesty itself — from the ineffable supreme voluptuaries we 
have hitherto tacitly reckoned them to be, into the cheerful, 
untiring, undaunted missionaries of every lowliest human want, 
and irresistibly invokes, therefore, a faith and a science whose 
past piddling dissensions will all be forgotten erelong in the 
access of a regenerate spiritual unity. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 113 

The creative law, as we have already abundantly seen, is that 
our subjective or natural identity, no less than our objective or 
spiritual individuality, is a strict divine communication to us ; 
and that without this incidental gift indeed the grander spirit- 
ual gift could never be secure to us, would be simply nugatory 
in fact. That is to say, we must sensibly exist in ourselves, or 
enjoy phenomenal self-consciousness, before we can pretend act- 
ually to image the divine perfection ; for that perfection, being 
spiritual or living, requires to be imaged in what seems, but only 
seems, to have life in itself. Of course, life cannot image itself 
in life (for life is life), but only in death, i. e. in what out- 
wardly appears but inwardly is not. Besides, if we really should 
have life in ourselves, we should be uncreated ; and to be un- 
created, would require us to be without selfhood, for selfhood 
means limitation, means the condition of a subject in relation to 
its own nature ; that is, a purely conscious or composite style of 
existence, whose unity consequently is not in itself, but is 
essentially referable to a higher source. But, although we 
are really devoid of being, we must nevertheless seem to our- 
selves absolutely to be, or else we shall have neither sense nor 
understanding, neither affection nor thought, nor any other 
attribute whereupon the truth of our existence may be ground- 
ed. If we thus unmistakably appear to ourselves to be, or 
possess moral consciousness, we have in that fact a basis for 
any amount of subsequent divine culture or discipline, whereby 
we may be gradually educated out of finite into infinite knowl- 
edge ; gradually elevated out of subjective or phenomenal exist- 
ence into objective or real being ; gradually built up in fine 
out of the mere negative imagery of God, which we present by 
nature, into positive likenesses of his immortal spiritual perfec- 
tion. 

But let us not be duped by our own terms. When, for ex- 
ample, we say that God, and God alone, gives us selfhood, that 
is, natural or subjective identity, it is obvious that we use lan- 
guage suggested by material analogies ; and we must not allow 
any mere literal images of the truth to control, and so obscure, 
our perception of the spiritual reality. God does not give us 
selfhood in any outward manner, as I give a gift to my child ; 
for that would require us to exist before we were in existence, 



114 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

or to be on hand to receive our selfhood, before selfhood could 
be given to us. There is, and indeed can be, no proportion be- 
tween God's giving and ours, inasmuch as he gives infinitely, 
i.e. gives himself; and we give finitely, i.e. do not give our- 
selves, but only what we have over and above ourselves, name- 
ly, our superfluity. In a word, God is a creator, who gives sub- 
jective or conscious life to the work of his hands ; while man is at 
most a maker, who gives mere objective or unconscious existence 
to the conceptions of his genius. Let us beware, then, of reflec- 
tively picturing the creative procedure, in giving us selfhood or 
identity, as by any means an outward, personal, or moral act. 
In order to allow it to be that, we should be obliged, as I have 
just said, subjectively to antedate our own subjectivity. No, 
the creative throe is no mere rational adaptation of means to 
ends, like our highest activity ; much less, is it any act of simple 
will or caprice, like that of some flashy conjurer or magician, 
who would set off his own vain prowess by appearing to bring 
something out of nothing, or giving what is impossible a faint 
semblance of probability. It is not an act at all in the strict 
sense of that word, as being a something past and over, a mere 
deed of power begun and ended in space and time. For 6pace 
and time are judgments of the finite intelligence exclusively ; 
and creation is never done and never past, but is renewed every 
moment, being instinct with and inseparable from the inmost 
love and life of God. It is what Swedenborg calls the perpetual 
existere of the divine esse ; that is to say, a most sincere, spon- 
taneous, irresistible going-forth of the creative love in every 
method of formative wisdom — the creature himself being the 
real and inexpugnable voucher of that wisdom. No doubt the 
creature, misled by his senses or subjective consciousness, sepa- 
rates himself to his own immature thought in a very silly con- 
ceited way from the creator, and imagines himself when once 
created, or consciously afloat, to exist ever after on his own bot- 
tom, on his own independent or absolute merits. But this is a 
mere fantasy of our servile or finite understanding, the truth of 
the case being all the while that our selfhood, apparently so ab- 
solute, is a mere semblance or shadow of which the lord or 
divine natural man is the sole substance or reality. 

This is what creation means to Swedenbor g. It means that 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 115 

our conscious or subjective life is but an arrest and appropriation 
to ourselves of the objective or unconscious life we have in God. 
It means, in fine, that God, and God alone, lives in us, when most 
we appear to have life in ourselves ; whence it becomes instantly 
evident that space and time, or nature and history, have abso- 
lutely nothing whatever to do with creation in its objective 
aspect, or as it exists to the divine mind, but only in its subjec- 
tive aspect, or as it exists to our infirm thought. They belong 
to it, not as a result, but as a process. They are not laws of real 
or spiritual being, but only of phenomenal or conscious exist- 
ence, and characterize creation therefore, not as it appears to 
instructed, but only to uninstructed thought. They have but a 
representative function at most, as symbolizing to the created 
intelligence laws of spiritual life and action, which must other- 
wise have remained forever incognizable and inconceivable to it. 
They are not the true or spiritual creation but a rigid corre- 
spondence or reflection of it to a finite or sensibly-organized 
intelligence, whereby the creator in methods perfectly level to 
the created apprehension, becomes able fully to reveal himself to 
every one who is inwardly disposed to be enlightened in divine 
knowledge. 

Let the reader ponder what is here said. This visible uni- 
verse is by no means the true or spiritual creation, but only and 
at best a lively image or correspondence of it to a sensibly-organ- 
ized intelligence. The spiritual creation is not a work of God 
begun and accomplished in space and time. It is an infinite and 
eternal work, disclosing itself in space and time, or nature and 
history, without doubt, but deriving all its form and substance 
from the immediate divine presence and activity. The truth of 
creation spiritually regarded is that of the lord or essential 
divine humanity, which means the union of God and man, crea- 
tor and creature, in first principles, that is, in affection and 
thought ; so as that no intelligent angel or spirit shall ever doubt 
for a moment, that however much his good and his truth may 
seem to be his own they are nevertheless all the while the lord 
alone in him. It is this that makes creation so inglorious an 
attribute of the divine sovereignty, compared with that of 
redemption. For creation leaves the creature at his highest a 
merely natural existence — without personality — consequently 



116 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

without any faculty of spiritual insight or sympathetic reaction 
towards his creator, and it leaves the creator accordingly and at 
best a sort of glorified clock-maker, intent no doubt upon mech- 
anizing his creature to the best available issues, but utterly 
indifferent to his spiritual fellowship and co-operation, utterly 
insensible to the awful wants of his soul. One would gladly be 
exiled from such an Eden to a land producing only thorns and 
thistles, or where one should earn one's bread at the cost of his 
proper toil and sweat ; for it would be bread honestly earned at 
all events, and would make life for the first time seem life in 
contrast with one's past beggarly existence. Swedenborg accord- 
ingly makes creation to pivot exclusively upon redemption, that 
is, upon a work of infinite and eternal mercy accomplished in 
the nature of the creature, or outside of his personal conscious- 
ness, whereby he becomes divorced from his native imbecility 
and impotence as a created being, and clothed upon with all 
divine power, innocence, and peace. Hence the universe of 
nature, and hence man its finished flower and fruit, whose 
individuality alone is commensurate with such universality ; for 
he, although born in utter want and nakedness, and bred in 
weakness and infamy, has the task and has the power divinely 
given him of subduing all nature to himself, and so leading it 
back to him from whom it originally comes. 

Thus Swedenborg disconcerts our existing religious and scien- 
tific empiricism, by vacating the sole intellectual ground or basis 
it possesses in the assumed integrity of nature, or the imputation 
of an objective reality to space and time. The intellectual fal- 
lacy which is common to the rival parties, and which alone in- 
deed makes their rivalry possible, is, that a certain indisputable 
work of God exists which we call nature. If it were not so, 
the sceptic would never complain of the devotee for alleging 
another work of God, which he calls supernatural or miraculous 
as enforcing a temporary suspension of nature's laws. The 
sceptic and the devotee perfectly agree that nature is a positive 
achievement of God. But the former holds that it is his only 
achievement ; while the latter maintains that a subsequent work 
takes place, which effectually revokes or supersedes the former 
one, and puts our knowledge of God consequently upon a much 
more authentic footing. Hence their interminable conflict, the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 117 

noise of which Swedenborg instantly silences by denying their 
common premise ; or affirming that nature is no objective, but a 
purely subjective work of God, in the interest exclusively of 
man's spiritual evolution in harmony with the creative perfection. 
Nature serves, according to Swedenborg, and serves only to 
give God's true creature, which is man, a constitutional projec- 
tion from his creative source, or a basis of self-consciousness, 
whereupon he may subsequently rise to any height which seems 
to himself good of interior communion or fellowship with infi- 
nite goodness and truth. 

It is not difficult accordingly to hear Swedenborg saying in 
effect to both of these disputants : " The matter of your dispute 
is essentially trivial, or impertinent to philosophy, for the sim- 
ple reason that it has no ground in objective reality, but only in 
your own subjective ignorance and fantasy. You, Mr. Mansel, 
are interested, for what doubtless seem to you good theologic 
reasons, in maintaining a possible divorce or disproportion be- 
tween our knowledge and our belief; and you, Mr. Mill, for 
what seem to you equally good scientific reasons, are inter- 
ested in the denial of that possibility. But your quarrel could 
never have arisen unless you both alike held, to begin with, that 
our knowledge is essentially objective, and not subjective ; that it 
is a knowledge of what really or absolutely is, and not alone of 
what actually or contingently exists, i. e. appears to be. Now, 
philosophy disowns and derides this pretension. Philosophy 
declares that being (which is real existence) is spiritual, and 
hence can never be sensibly, but only inwardly or livingly dis- 
cerned — can never be known directly, or as it is in itself, but 
only as it is reproduced in what is not itself ; so that existence 
(which is phenomenal being) confesses itself a sheerly reflex 
condition of things, and is therefore sure to turn the intellect upside 
down which regards it as a direct or positive exhibition of truth. 
Thus what both of you gentlemen subjectively know — what 
your senses reveal to you jointly — is, according to philosophy, 
no divine reality, but only the semblance of such reality to a 
wholly undivine — i. e. created — intelligence. How absurd 
then for either of you to attempt philosophizing upon that shallow 
provisional basis of knowledge ! What possible interest can 
philosophy feel, Mr. Mansel, in your devout assurance of faith ? 



118 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

What greater interest can it pretend to take, Mr. Mill, in your 
sceptical plea of ignorance ? They are both alike worthless to 
a philosophic regard, because they proceed upon the assumption 
that our beliefs and our doubts, our knowledge and our igno- 
rance, are exercised upon realities, whereas they have to do only 
with the shadows of reality. They both alike assume that 
nature is not merely a sensible but a rational reality, whereas it 
is the mere negative or inverse attestation of such reality. 
What Mr. Mansel specifically believes or doubts in any case — 
what Mr. Mill specifically knows or ignores in like case — is 
never the objective reality but only the subjective show of 
things. Of what vital moment to philosophy therefore is the 
vaunted faith of the one, or the vaunted science of the other ? 
The things they are severally exercised upon, nature and his- 
tory, belong exclusively to the phenomenal realm, never for a 
moment exceed the compass of the subjective understanding, 
and hence are destitute of the least objective significance. To 
go into a passion over them accordingly — above all, to assume 
a philosophic strut on one side and the other, as if the business 
of the universe had been at last completely settled — is about 
as absurd as it would be for two children who, looking by turns 
into a mirror, and seeing each a different face of reality pro- 
jected, should thereupon fall foul of each other, and vituperate 
each the other's innocent eyes, because they could not see the 
same face. God forbid that I should feel the least personal 
complacency in your shortcomings to philosophy ! For I have 
never for an instant dissembled the fact, that all my own knowl- 
edge upon the subject is owing to no superior intellectual acumen 
on my part, but wholly to sensible angelic mediation. But I 
maintain that this knowledge, how little soever it may flatter 
one's pride of independence, gives to every one that possesses it 
a great intellectual advantage over those who do not, because in 
the first place it confronts one with real, and so divorces him 
from merely apparitional existences : and in the second, it puts 
an end to controversy, or converts that honest human force in 
us which has been hitherto squandered in mere idle blood- 
shed into a force of endless spiritual nourishment and edifica- 
tion." 

Such is a perfectly fair report of Swedenborg's attitude to- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG 119 

wards our existing intellectual dissensions. I freely admit, at the 
same time, that nothing can be more dispiriting than this report 
to the mind which craves above all things some authoritative 
adjustment of these dissensions, in " giving reason," as the 
French say, to one side or the other. I cannot find a word of 
soothing addressed to that pusillanimous expectation in all Swe- 
denborg's books, for he denies reason to both sides alike. In fact 
I seriously warn every one away from these books, whose mind 
preserves any considerable leaven of respect for " authority " of 
any sort, divine or human, religious or scientific ; i. e. who is 
not prepared, to render a supreme obedience to his own convic- 
tions of goodness and truth whithersoever they lead, him, and 
however much our best authenticated men of faith and men of 
science may refuse him countenance. We have indeed in the 
extraordinary lore with which Swedenborg's books make us fa- 
miliar our first faint presentiment of an entirely new or regen- 
erate intellectual existence — an existence whose fixed earth, or 
immovable foundations, is laid exclusively in the ten command- 
ments, and whose free heaven, or infinite expanse, is made up of 
love divine and human, universal and particular. It is a world 
whose deepest night is our present intellectual day, whose 
remotest west is our kindling east, whose frostiest winter is our 
most blooming summer, the obvious solution of the enigma 
being, that our current intellectual life proceeds upon the 
acknowledgment of nature as a fixed achievement of the divine 
power, while these books represent it as an altogether fluid and 
obedient medium of such power. Our infallible doctors make 
nature a divine terminus, whereas Swedenborg makes it at most 
a starting-point of the creative energy. Our old intellect is 
fashioned upon a conception of nature, which reports her organ- 
izing a real or essential discrepancy between creator and crea- 
ture. The new intellect beholds in nature on the contrary a 
real or essential marriage of the divine and human, and admits 
only a contingent or logical divorce. In short, while the old 
world regards nature as the realm exclusively of finite or created 
existence, and hence at best of fossilized or inactive divinity, the 
world to come, of which we catch in Swedenborg's books the 
tenderest vernal breath as it were, is built upon the recognition 
of the spiritual only in the natural, of the divine only in the 



120 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

human ; and hence exhibits the creature instinct and alive with 
the creative personality.* 

XIX. 

It thus appears that Mr. Mansel and Mr. Mill cannot help 
differing egregiously from Swedenborg in the estimate they 
make of Christ's nativity, inasmuch as they both alike look 
upon nature as an absolutely fixed existence, as an essentially 
finite quantity, wholly incapable of any adjustment or approx- 
imation to the infinite ; while Swedenborg regards it as an essen- 
tially indeterminate quantity, or indefinite existence, being in 
itself neither infinite nor finite, but the exact neutrality or indif- 
ference of the two, and standing therefore in equal and unforced 
proximity to either interest. Both Mr. Mansel and Mr. Mill 
conceive nature herself — the cosmos — whatever they may 
make of her shifting specific forms, to be her own end, to exist 
upon her own absolute basis, as exhibiting no normal subser- 
viency to a distinctly superior style of life. With Swedenborg, 
on the other hand, nature is only an outward image or show, only 
a sensuous mask, of a living decease, so to speak — an inward 
obscuration and humiliation — a spiritual imprisonment and coer- 
cion — which the creative love undergoes in endowing its true 
creature, man, with subjective identity, or valid self-conscious- 
ness. For selfhood, or moral life, would be simply unattainable 
and indeed inconceivable to us, without a quasi natural basis, or 
physical background, to give it conscious relief; without a 
something properly objective to it, interposing between it and 
the creator, and tempering his presence and activity in a way 
rationally to authenticate all its instincts of freedom and power ; so 
that the creative love, if it would endow us with moral sub- 
jectivity as a basis of our spiritual evolution, or objectivity to 
itself, is bound to immerse itself in mere mineral, vegetable, and 
animal conditions, is bound eternally to identify itself in all sub- 
jective regards with cosmical law and order. 

The consequence of so fundamental a discrepancy, in their 
intellectual point of view, between Swedenborg of the one part 
and Mr. Mansel and Mr. Mill of the other, is that when nature 

* See Appendix, note E. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 121 

is finally called upon to give up the ghost, confess her secret, and 
avouch the latent infinitude which sanctifies her most finite 
form, neither Mr. Mansel nor Mr. Mill is at all rationally 
equipped for the catastrophe ; the one feeling himself com- 
pelled to pronounce it miraculous or supernatural, the other to 
pronounce it an illusion or imposture ; while Swedenborg, on 
the contrary, declares that this so-called catastrophe is precisely 
nature's normal business ; that her only true and honest func- 
tion has ever been to subserve revelation ; that she actually exists 
db initio, and has always been providentially graduated, shaped, 
and guided to that supreme issue : so that all our hot disputes as 
to whether things abstractly are or are-not, turn out to be of no 
philosophic account as bearing upon the doctrine of being, or 
determining what really is, but at most of a scientific moment, 
as bearing upon the doctrine of knowing, or determining what 
actually appears. Swedenborg says in effect to dogmatist and 
sceptic alike : " You have neither of you the least right to for- 
mulate an ontological judgment, until you shall have ceased, 
first of all, looking upon nature and history as finalities, and 
come to regard them as an abject correspondence or servile 
imagery of spiritual truth. It is simply ludicrous to hear one of 
you gravely pronouncing a certain historical event to be super- 
natural, and the other as gravely pronouncing it z'w/ranatural, 
when it is palpable to me that neither one nor the other has the 
faintest suspicion of what nature herself is. You have neither 
of you ever enjoyed any intellectual insight of nature, but only 
and at most a sensible contact with her. Had either of you ever 
been admitted to an unreserved intimacy with her, or an intelli- 
gent acquaintance with the heights of spiritual being whence 
alone she descends, he would have discovered that she was a 
real existence, a fixed quantity, only to a sensibly-organized in- 
telligence, and hence that nothing can be more preposterous in 
the eyes of philosophy than to make her a standard of truth, 
or convert her from an abject servant into the controlling mis- 
tress of the mind. You might as well confound brick-making 
with architecture, or convert the moral law from a fixed earthly 
root of human culture into its free heavenly fruit. Nature 
and history are not objective, but exclusively subjective, di- 
vine experiences. They attest not the creator's infinitude or 



122 THE SECEET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

perfection, which is what he is in himself, but the finiteness or 
imperfection he necessarily contracts when he descends to the 
level of the created nature, or puts on the creature's lineaments. 
In creation he is utterly subject to the exigencies of our finite 
consciousness, so that there is no possible abyss of infamy 
through which his patient unsoiled love is not content to be 
dragged by us ; and it is only in our spiritual redemption that 
we release him from this degrading thraldom, and allow him to 
become truly and intelligibly objective to us. It is very childish 
in us accordingly to attempt imprisoning the infinite within the 
finite, instead of allowing the latter freely to expand to the 
dimensions of the former. It is very absurd, in other words, 
for us to insist upon interpreting history by nature, reason by 
sense, high by low, and not contrariwise ; beginning thereupon 
to wrangle about what is or i$-not, as if we had some private 
access to divine knowledge, and were intellectually independent 
of the great light of revelation. It is not to be denied that you 
are both of you extremely clever men. You both possess 
uncommon ratiocinative resources, and are both alike capable 
consequently of making white seem black, or black white, at 
your pleasure. This, however, is no help, but rather a hin- 
drance to you — unless indeed you distrust your own plausible 
gifts — in the discernment of truth. No cordial, disinterested 
lover of truth can long endure to reason about it. He willingly 
affirms or denies whatever is agreeable or repugnant to it ; but 
he would be very sorry rationally to enforce its acceptance upon 
any unwilling mind. 

" I repeat, then, that nature has not the least claim to be a 
direct revelation of God, any more than the body has to be a 
direct revelation of the soul, or the cuticle, which invests the 
body, has to be a direct revelation of its interior viscera. The 
body attests the soul only to those who are previously convinced 
of the soul's existence ; and the skin illustrates the activity of 
the more vital organs only to those who are directly acquainted 
with these latter. So nature may be said to attest and illustrate 
the creative name only to those who have previously become 
acquainted with it in history or man ; but whatever direct infor- 
mation it pretends to give is sure to be misleading. That is to 
say, it is an obedient mirror of divine revelation, but the lioht 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOEG. 123 

which illumines it in that case is not supplied by itself, but ex- 
clusively by a reason emancipated from sense. You have neither 
of you consequently the least warrant to dogmatize positively 
or negatively upon historic problems — the problems of our 
human origin and destiny — until you have ascertained the 
relation of nature to history. I have not the slightest intention 
nor desire to intimate that you are bound to accept mine or any 
other man's view of that relation. But I do say without any 
hesitation that unless you arrive at some intellectual conclusions 
upon this subject — unless you formulate to yourselves some 
intellectual doctrine as to the kind of tie which binds nature to 
spirit — you are both alike utterly incompetent to say what is 
either true or untrue of the intercourse between God and man ; 
both alike incompetent in fact to furnish even a shrewd guess at 
the solution of any ontological problem. Before you can be 
philosophically qualified in this direction, you must have defin- 
itively settled it to your own mind : whether nature is an objec- 
tive presentation of divine truth to an intelligence capable of 
directly appreciating such truth ; or whether it is a sheer sub- 
jective abasement and humiliation of it to an understanding 
infinitely below its level, and sure otherwise to remain out of all 
acquaintance and sympathy with it. No dodging of this issue 
can be tolerated for a moment without peril to your philosophic 
souls. You are bound to postpone every derivative scientific 
inquiry until you shall have first of all decided for your- 
selves the grand original problem of philosophy, whether na- 
ture is an absolute or purely contingent existence ; whether it is 
what it appears to be, a substantive work of God achieved in 
space and time, and presenting its justification therefore on its 
face ; or whether it really is what it does not appear to be, 
namely, a mere phenomenal manifestation, or reverberation to 
sense, of an infinite and eternal work of God accomplishing in 
the spiritual and invisible realm of the human mind, the realm of 
man's living affection and thought." 

Thus not being but existence, which is only a manifestation of 
being, is Swedenborg's conception of the meaning both of 
nature and history : nature expressing the subjective aspect of 
existence, which means the descent of the creator to created 
form ; and history its objective aspect, which means the conse 



124 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 



quent gradual ascent of the creature to a fellowship with the 
uncreated perfection. The two movements are hierarchically 
related as husband and wife are in marriage, where force is seen 
endowing weakness. They combine to constitute creation 
according to a law of definite proportions, as hydrogen and 
oxygen combine to produce water, or nitrogen and oxygen to 
produce atmospheric air, what is mere quantity in the one freely 
deferring to what is quality in the other. Thus what is greatest 
in existence, what is generic or universal, in short what is prop- 
erly substantial, gravitates towards what is least in existence, 
what is specific or individual, what in short is strictly formal ;' 
and this in its turn vigorously reacts to that. The homo, which 
is the fixed or cosmical and masculine element in existence, 
yearns towards the vir, which is its free or domestic and fem- 
inine element ; while the vir again responsively aspires to the 
homo, aspires to bring all nature, mineral, vegetable, and animal, 
into its embrace, and reproduce it in every form of its own 
teeming activity. Thus we may say that the great historic 
problem — the problem alike of our earliest religious and our 
latest philosophic culture — has been to reconcile nature and 
man, to fuse flesh and spirit, to wed force and freedom, to harmo- 
nize law and gospel, to marry mechanism and morals, in short 
permanently to unite the indefinitely great, which is the superb 
overbearing cosmos, with the indefinitely small, which is our 
humble domestic earth, the pleasant house of our abode, that so 
whatsoever is most outward or public and profane in existence 
may find itself authenticated by what is most inward or private 
and sacred ; that so whatsoever is most absolute or material, and 
therefore domineering and cruel in experience, may become sanc- 
tified by association with whatsoever is most contingent, most 
moral or free, and therefore most gracious, pliable, and orderly. 
Such is the tie which subsists between the two constitutive 
elements of creation, —a strictly conjugal tie, or one which ex- 
hibits the superior and creative element altogether merging and 
losing itself in the inferior and created one. Creation is mani- 
festly inconceivable on any lower terms. For if the infinite 
creative substance should refuse to accommodate itself to the 
finite created form, the creature who is nothing but by the 
creator would fail to appear, would remain obstinately non- 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 125 

existent ; just as air or water would fail to exist or appear if 
their constituent elements should not renounce their subjective 
differences, in order to become objectively fused and reproduced 
in the bosom of their harmless and beautiful offspring. Water 
is the type of all that is spiritually pure or true. It is the soft 
motherly womb, formless itself, out of which all form grows and 
defines itself. And nothing is so wholesome as the air which 
typifies the invisible divine breath or spirit by which we live. 
It is the warm paternal mantle wrapped about us, which — 
colorless itself — lets in infinite color, beauty, and distinction 
upon everything it touches. But air and water are thus gifted 
— are thus pure and strong and generous, thus fluid, searching, 
and caressing, in a word, are so little magisterial and so exten- 
sively ministerial to existence — only because they are the fruit 
of a strict marriage tie between two forces, which in themselves 
or subjectively are so frankly antagonistic as to be mutually 
incompatible, and which are incapable of combining therefore 
except objectively or in prolification, that is, in some third or 
neutral quantity which effaces every vestige of their intrinsic 
oppugnancy in its own concordant and unitary bosom. 

So is it precisely with creation. In order to claim any validity 
in itself — in order to exhibit the least permanent worth or char- 
acter — creation must be the fruit of a stringent indissoluble 
marriage between its infinite and finite factors. It must confess 
itself a perfect reconciliation in objective form of two powers 
which in themselves, or subjectively, are as reciprocally opposed 
as zenith and nadir, good and evil, light' and dark, heaven and 
hell. This is the distinction between marriage and concubinage, 
that the one tie is objective, social, productive, while the other 
is subjective, selfish, prodigal. Concubinage is physical, instinc- 
tual, compulsory, having purely subjective issues, or expressing 
mere natural want, the want of some suitable ministry to reflect 
one's essential mastery. Marriage is moral, voluntary, free, 
claiming distinctively objective sanctions, or expressing the 
purely spiritual need one feels to supplement a feebler existence 
with his own force. In marriage the man so freely makes him- 
self over to the woman, so cordially endows her with all his 
substance, as to make a spiritual resurrection or glorification for 
him in his offspring logically inevitable. Thus it is the essen- 



126 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

tially objective nature of marriage, the fact that the parties to it 
are utterly disunited in themselves, and united only in their off- 
spring, which makes it undefiled and honorable, or invests it 
with the social interest and prestige that distinguish human from 
brute prolification. And it is the essentially subjective nature 
of concubinage, the fact that the parties to it are one not 
actively or in prolification, but passively or in themselves, or 
that they contemplate — not that glorified or regenerate social 
existence to which marriage partners find themselves summoned 
in the person of their offspring, not that large and frank and 
generous commerce with each other in all humane aspiration 
and endeavor to which the interests of their offspring invite 
these latter — but a mere transient, selfish, and mercenary 
traffic in personal delights, terminable at the caprice of either 
party, which jputs an indelible stigma upon it. It would be 
infinitely discreditable accordingly to the two factors in crea- 
tion, if their tie were anything short of a marriage tie, i. e. 
if it did not claim an exclusively social sanction, or profess to 
stand only in that conscious, living reconciliation of the two 
otherwise irreconcilable natures which the church has always 
prophesied, but which is spiritually realized only in the grand 
practical truth of " the divine natural humanity," or the ad- 
vent of that predestined perfect society, fellowship, equality of 
men in heaven and on earth, which alone has power to bring 
nature and spirit, the outward and inward, the universal and 
particular, the cosmos and the earth, the homo and the vir, the 
man and the woman, the world and the church, into living 
unison, and so reduce the infinite creative majesty into the 
keenest, most sympathetic fellowship, into the active efficient 
servitude, of every humblest organic want known to the ex- 
perience of the meanest, most necessitous, most infamous of 
created bosoms. Just conceive for a moment that creator and 
creature, instead of being indissolubly married in creation, were 
bound to each other only par amours, or as the artfst is bound to 
his work ; and then ask yourself what would be the practical 
result to creation. Why, I need hardly say that spiritual exist- 
ence would instantly declare itself an impossible conception, for 
spiritual existence is universally conceded to stand only in the 
union of the divine and human natures ; but I must say, what 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 127 

is not so obvious, that physical and moral existence, or nature 
and history, would in that case also disappear, since the subjec- 
tive discrimination of these things has always been a mere pro- 
visional necessity of their eventual objective reunion in a perfect 
society or brotherhood of men. In fact, the visible creation 
would at once collapse from the living, breathing, organic unity 
of force and freedom, of genus and species, of law and order, 
which constitutes our actual cosmos, into a lifeless mush or 
chaos infinitely below anything now extant even in mineral 
nature outside the seething bowels of iEtna or Vesuvius. 



XX. 

I believe that I have now to some extent adequately venti- 
lated the philosophic contents of the christian revelation, as 
these are either directly explicated or indirectly implicated in 
Swedenborg's books. I have no idea that in doing so I have 
entirely succeeded in removing the scruples of any one who has 
been hitherto prejudiced against the christian doctrine, on the 
score of its proffering some apparent affront to what his heart 
pronounces good. What we all of us need — in order to have 
every prejudice and misconception thus honestly motived effectu- 
ally met — is not a more conclusive argumentation on the part 
of any one else, but a larger intellectual insight on our own 
part ; and this will not fail to be forthcoming in due season. 
But I hope that I have nevertheless done something to help the 
thought of those who, being heartily disposed to entertain the 
christian verity — which is the truth of Christ's literal divinity, 
or his flesh-and-blood resurrection from death — are yet more 
or less unaware how profoundly rooted it is in the intellect. No 
truly philosophic objection can be intelligently urged against it, 
but at most a scientific one. The only plausible weapons forged 
against it have always been supplied by the arsenal of sense, not 
by that of the reason. Nothing indeed can be more absurd to 
sense — or the imagination which looks upon nature not as a 
mere implication of moral existence, but as existing in itself or 
absolutely — than the pretension of a person so genuinely un- 
ostentatious as the Christ to constitute the only true and suffi- 
cent revelation of the divine name. And every one accordingly 



128 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

whose reason is controlled by sense, or who refuses to see in 
nature a mere echo or correspondence of the spiritual creation, 
the creation which falls exclusively within or above — not with 
out or below — the realm of consciousness, will be sure to reject 
his pretension : the obvious philosophy of the fact being that 
sense necessarily views nature as the only just measure of the 
creative perfection, and regards every one therefore who is alto- 
gether devoid of native pomp or sumptuosity — who has no 
personal grace nor comeliness, no inheritance, no learning, no 
wit, no skill, no genius, no natural distinction of any kind to 
recommend him to popular favor — as obviously disowned or 
smitten of God. 

But this judgment as we have seen is eminently fallacious, 
inasmuch as nature is in reality no just measure of the creative 
resources, any more than the materials out of which the Cologne 
cathedral is wrought are a just measure of its architect's genius. 
On the contrary, nature is an incessant foil to creation, operating 
a perpetual constraint, imposing an invincible limitation, upon 
the motions of the divine spirit, until it becomes historically 
taken up or reproduced in moral form ; until it becomes histor- 
ically purged and renovated through man's enlarging self-knowl- 
edge, through his domestic, his civic, and his political expei'ience, 
and so at last transfigured with an exclusively human substance 
or meaning. Sense has no hesitation in regarding nature as an 
objective work of God, or as furnishing the legitimate criterion 
of his power, just as the clock is an objective work of its maker 
as furnishing the proper measure of his activity. But the 
analogy is grossly fallacious and misleading for this reason, 
namely, the clock-maker does not stand in a creative relation to 
his clock, but only in a formative one. That is to say, he does 
not give it natural selfhood or generic identity, with a view to 
certain subsequent spiritual possibilities on its part, with a view, 
for example, to a certain specific or individual reaction on its part 
toward himself; just as God endows man with natural subjec- 
tivity in order that he may thereby become forever spiritually 
objective to his maker. On the contrary, he simply makes the 
clock out of lifeless materials, or gives it a purely artificial ex- 
istence with a view to supplement his own subjective infirmity, 
an existence of which the clock itself can have no enjoyment 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 129 

nor any perception ; so that, instead of avouching its maker's 
spiritual infinitude, it simply illustrates his natural limitations ; 
instead of proving a monument of his wealth and power, turns 
out a humble confession of his want and impotence. The foible 
of the mechanician is that he stands in a purely objective re- 
lation to his work, and reduces his work therefore to his proper 
subjection. The glory of the creator and his strength is that 
he makes his creature his exclusive and eternal object, and him- 
self its loving subject. Following our a priori instincts, or 
judging according to sense, we should say that creation must 
necessarily arrange itself upon the plan of the creature's proper 
subjectivity to the creator, and the creator's proper objectivity 
to the creature. But the light of revelation stamps this judg- 
ment with fatuity in showing the creator invincibly subject to 
the least or lowest of his creatures, and this least or lowest in 
its turn invincibly objective to him ; so that creation spiritually 
regarded turns out so exquisitely balanced an equation between 
the creative and the created natures, as that all the iniquity, 
transgression, and sin of the lower nature become freely as- 
sumed by the higher, and all the holiness, peace, and innocence 
of the latter become freely made over to the former. 

Thus, reason emancipated from sense, or what is the same 
thing enlightened by revelation, disowns our a priori reason- 
ing, and pronounces nature an altogether subjective divine work 
enforced in the exclusive interest of man's spiritual evolution ; 
just as the moral control I exert over myself is a subjective 
work on my part enforced by my objective regard for society, 
or my sense of human fellowship ; just as an artist's education 
and discipline — which often are nothing more than his physical 
and intellectual penury and moral compression — are a needful 
subjective preparation for his subsequent objective or aesthetic 
expansion. Nature has no existence in itself to spiritual 
thought, because it is a mere implication of man, just as the 
works of a watch have no existence in themselves to rational 
thought, but only as an implication of the watch ; or just as my 
brain and heart, my lungs and liver, my stomach and intestines, 
do not exist on their own account, but only as a requisite in- 
volution of my body. Nature exists in itself only to carnal 
thought, or an intelligence unemancipated from sense ; just as 



130 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

the works of a watch would claim a substantive value only to a 
savage regard, or as the viscera of the body might claim a sen- 
sible existence independently of the body, or out of their due 
subordination to it, only to uninstructed thought. Nature and 
history do doubtless evolve or explicate the spiritual world, be- 
cause they are first of all inexorably involved or implied in its 
life ; just as the works of a watch explicate the watch itself on its 
objective or functional side as a timekeeper, because they are 
rigidly implied in such functioning ; or as my bodily viscera ex- 
plain the life of my body, because they alone furnish the condi- 
tions of its activity. But then we must remember that nature 
and history illustrate spiritual existence not to a servile, but to a 
free or qualified intelligence ; just as the mechanism of a watch 
illustrates its peculiar function, and the viscera of the body illus- 
trate its proper life, only to the eye of the mind, only to an 
educated or regenerate intelligence, and by no means to the eye 
of sense. 

What we call " the universe of nature," then, and conceive 
to exist in itself or substantively, i. e. in equal independence of 
God and man, is a gigantic superstition of our spiritual ignorance 
and imbecility. There is no universal natural substance, but 
only a universal spiritual substance, God the creator ; and there 
is no individual spiritual form answering to this substance, but 
only an individual natural form, man the creature. But these 
two, although they are indissolubly one in creation, or to the 
divine mind, are altogether distinct, and even antagonistic to 
consciousness, or the created imagination. For consciousness is 
built upon sense, and sense analyzes or dissolves existence, put- 
ting the universal before, and the individual after, or one here 
and the other there ; while it is only the reason emancipated 
from sense which synthetizes existence, or sees the universal 
only in the individual, the individual only in the universal. In 
fact consciousness or life would be wholly impossible to the 
creature, without this sharp discrimination of its physical or 
universal element from its moral or individual element ; for 
consciousness means the union of an inward subject and an 
outward object, being so much the more or less vivacious as the 
object is more or less identified with the nature of the subject. 
Thus, what creation when regarded from a spiritual or inward 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 131 

point of view unites — namely, infinite and finite, creator and 
creature, substance and form, reality and appearance, universal 
and particular, genus and species, homo and vir, man and 
woman — these it invariably divides when regarded from a 
sensible or outward point of view, presenting them together 
never in harmonious, but always in opposing fashion. They 
never produce a unitary, but always a reciprocally hostile im- 
pression upon the mind controlled by sense, God the creator 
being whatever, whenever, and wherever man the creature is 
not, and the latter of course standing in like contrariety to 
the former. Sense, in short, converts creation from a spiritual 
achievement of God in human nature exclusively, or the realm of 
consciousness, into a purely mechanical exploit of divine power 
in space and time, and hence puts an effectual end to the hope 
of any spiritual or free intercourse between creator and creature : 
so that a consciousness built upon sense requires to undergo a 
complete outward demolition and inward renewing, before it 
can be at all conformed to the truth of things. 

But what especially interests philosophy in the facts we have 
just recited, as bearing upon the christian revelation, and what 
therefore it is especially incumbent on us to observe, is, that 
what is spiritually greatest in existence, i. e. what is uppermost 
to creative thought, namely, the creature himself, is naturally 
least, or of comparatively no account to created thought ; while, 
on the other hand, what is spiritually least, or of no account 
whatever to creative thought, namely, the creator himself, is 
comparatively so overpowering to the created imagination as 
almost to suffocate its capacity of spiritual life. I am not so pre- 
sumptuous as to lament the fact ; I only signalize it. For the 
helpless necessity of the case is, that what is first in creative 
order shall be last in created, and what is last first. This 
necessity inheres in the infinitude or perfection of the creative 
love. For God is infinite love ; that is to say, his love is a 
purely objective love, without any subjective drawback or reac- 
tion, being a pure love of others untempered by the least love 
of himself, so that he cannot help making himself over in the 
plenitude of his perfection to whatsoever is not himself. But 
whatsoever is not creator is creature, and how shall the former 
make himself over in the plenitude of his uncreated love to the 



132 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

latter, when the very fact of the latter's creatureship must trans- 
mute all that love into instant self-love ? Of course there is no 
alternative if creation is really to take place. The creative love 
must either disavow its infinitude, and so renounce creation, or 
else it must frankly submit to all the degradation the created 
nature imposes upon it, i. e. it must consent to be converted 
from infinite love in itself to an altogether finite love in the 
creature. There is nothing in the creature but what is a fortiori 
in the creator, save the mark of his creatureship, which is " self- 
hood " or moral consciousness, being the wholly fallacious judg- 
ment he derives from the inspiration of sense as to his own 
absoluteness, or the fancied power of unlimited control he pos- 
sesses over his own actions. If accordingly the creative love 
should scruple to permit proprium or self hood to its creature — 
scruple to endow him with moral consciousness — it would 
withhold from him all conscious life or joy, and leave him at the 
highest a mere form of vegetative and animal existence. Crea- 
tion, to be spiritual — i. e. to allow of any true fellowship or 
equality between creator and creature — demands that the 
creature be himself, that is, be naturally posited to his own 
consciousness, and he cannot be thus posited save in so far as the 
creative love vivifies his essential destitution, organizes it in 
living form, and by the experience thus engendered in the 
created bosom lays a basis for any amount of free or spiritual 
reaction in the creature towards the uncreated good. 

One sees at a glance, then, how very discreditable a thing 
creation would be to the creator, and how very injurious to the 
creature, if it stopped short in itself, i. e. contented itself with 
simply giving the creature natural selfhood, or antagonizing him 
with the creator. Nothing could be more hideous to conceive of 
than a creation which should end by exhibiting the subjective 
antagonism of its two factors, without providing for their subse- 
quent objective reconciliation ; which should show every cupidity 
incident to the abstract nature of the creature inflamed to infin- 
itude, while the helpless creature himself at the same time was 
left to be the unlimited prey of his nature. Certainly no such 
abortive creative conception as this attributes itself to the divine 
love, for that love is methodized by an infinite wisdom, a wis- 
dom proportionate to itself. That is to say, creation, spiritually 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 133 

regarded, does not stop in itself, does not consist m giving the 
creature mere natural selfhood, or finite and phenomenal exist- 
ence, but acknowledges itself at bottom a great purgative or 
redemptive process, whereby the very nature of the creature 
becomes finally freed from its intrinsic limitations, and eternally 
associated with infinite goodness and truth. For the creative 
power, properly so called, which consists in energizing the nature 
of the creature to the extent of affording him moral conscious- 
ness, or a quasi life in himself, is of necessity limited by that 
nature, and can never avouch its proper infinitude consequently 
but by overcoming the nature, i. e. by exalting it out of physical 
and moral into exclusively social and aesthetic lineaments. Thus 
while creation shows us the creature naturally or subjectively 
projected from his creative source, alienated from (i. e. made 
oiher-than) God, redemption shows us the creator joyfully ac- 
quiescing in that event, or invisibly accompanying him into the 
most intimate fastnesses of his alienation, in order there to bring 
about his spiritual or objective restoration. 

Now, the providential machinery of this great revolution in 
our historic consciousness is supplied, as we have seen, by the 
church, which is the sole and unconscious guardian of the race's 
spiritual progress. I say "unconscious," because the church 
has always identified its interests with those of the natural self- 
hood in man, with the interests of his quasi life in himself, and, 
by washing it here and feeding it there, has vainly sought to 
make it bring forth positive divine or infinite fruit. The church 
has never had a misgiving as to the absolute nature of our moral 
experience. It has always taken for granted that conscience was 
a divine finality, the good man being absolutely good, or good in 
himself, and the evil man absolutely evil, or evil in himself; and 
has never so much as conceived consequently that heaven and 
hell, angel and devil, were only the positive and negative signs 
of a great unitary work of redemption yet to be accomplished, 
by divine might exclusively, in human nature itself. The church 
has always placed itself at the point of view of sense in divine 
things, and has greedily drunk in whatsoever that cunning old 
serpent has taught it of the essential or absolute, and by no means 
purely provisional, worth of the moral sentiment. It has always 
identified itself with the literal or merely created life of man as 



134 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

against his spiritual or regenerate possibilities ; with the prin- 
ciple of fate or necessity in existence as against that of freedom 
or delight ; with the generic or universal and masculine element 
in consciousness as against the specific or individual and feminine 
element ; and has never had a suspicion accordingly that the day- 
could dawn when its function would cease by its own limitation : 
i. e. when the vir or " woman " would renounce her enforced 
allegiance to the homo or " man " ; when the sentiment of freedom 
in the human bosom would overtop that of fate or constraint, and 
our private life disavow its rightful subserviency to our public 
necessities. The church has always regarded the adamic or 
finite element in consciousness as absolute, and has never had a 
dream of its eventually confessing itself an abject foil or back- 
ground to the interests of our spiritual life. And yet, in spite 
of the church's carnality, in spite of her dense stupidity in spirit- 
ual things, or rather indeed in virtue of it, she has been an unfal- 
tering servant of human progress, an invaluable divine handmaid 
in the evolution of man's true destiny. For, by blindly avouch- 
ing, as she has always done, not merely the logical but the 
absolute, not merely the phenomenal but the real, contrariety of 
creator and creature, or identifying herself with the honor of God 
as against that of man, she has so inflamed the fanaticism of the 
human bosom as gradually to provoke the disgust and indig- 
nation of all thoughtful and modest natures, and so reduce 
religion from its old magisterial to a now wholly ministerial 
efficacy in human affairs. She has always espoused the re- 
ligious as against the secular life of man, and by running that 
interest out to its last gasp of blasphemous and insolent preten- 
sion in the pride of the ascetic conscience, has ended at last by 
organizing such a godly revolt and reaction in the secular or lay 
bosom, as must ultimately revolutionize the existing relations 
of creature to creator, or convert them from a polemic to a 
pacific character, and so bring about the complete eventual 
redemption of the race. It takes for granted, or assumes as un- 
questionable, the superiority — as given in the sensuous imagi- 
nation — of the creator to the creature, of the creative to the 
created element in existence, of the divine to the human, of the 
Iwmo to the vir, the man to the woman, of what merely creates 
or gives being to things to what redeems or gives them form, 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 135 

thus of the distinctively substantial or masculine and universal 
element in consciousness, to its distinctively formal or feminine 
and individual element ; and by persistently pushing this assump- 
tion out to its logical and most inhuman issues, arouses at last so 
vigorous a resentment in the secular bosom, so righteous and 
reverential a reaction towards the outraged name of God, as end 
erelong in transfiguring the common mind of the race into the 
sole meet and adequate temple of the divine infinitude. The 
church ratifies d outrance the provisional despotism exercised by 
nature over man, by the cosmical or public interest in existence 
over the human and private interest, by the husband over the 
wife, by the parent over the child, by the strong over the weak, 
by the wise over the simple, by the flesh over the spirit, by our 
organic necessities over our spontaneous delights, by our sensuous 
appetites and passions over our rational affections and thoughts ; 
and it thereby succeeds in engendering so desperate a resistance 
and so acute a suffering in the innocent bosom of the race, that 
the heart of God melts with compassion, and he makes the 
cause of the oppressed — the cause of mankind — his sole and 
righteous cause forevermore. 



XXI. 

Thus we are brought back through this long circuit to our 
original thesis, and have only to make a clear estimate of its phil- 
osophic significance, in order to see the end of our labor. 

It is true that God creates the homo (Adam, man) male and 
female in his own image ; and the homo, because he is a created 
being, is all unconscious of himself, — that is, without moral 
form, or inwardly void, being still immersed in mineral, vege- 
table, and animal conditions. The truth of creation necessitates 
that the creator be all in the creature, and the creature in him- 
self nothing, so that unless the creator contrive in some way 
to give the creature selfhood, creation might as well have re- 
mained unattempted. Unless the creator be able to conceal 
his creative presence and power under a mask of the utmost 
imbecility and impotence, by making creation wear the as- 
pect at most of a contingent truth, or allowing the creature to 
attribute to himself a strictly natural origin and destiny, the 



136 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

latter will never put on form, will never come to consciousness. 
So long as the truth of creation enjoins that the creator be all in 
the creature, and the creature in himself nothing, it is evident 
that creation can never attain to actuality unless the creator be 
able utterly to sink himself out of sight, and let the creature 
alone appear to be. In other words the creative power must 
vivify the created nature by giving it moral form, or endowing it 
with selfhood, before the creature will ever attain to that con- 
scious, phenomenal, or subjective projection from his creative 
source which is implied in the truth of his real or objective 
creation. Of course no one can conceive of such a thing as a 
real or absolute separation of creature from creator, enforced by 
anything accidental to their relation : for by the hypothesis of 
creation, which makes the creator all in the relation, and the 
creature in himself nothing, even-thing conceivably accidental 
to it is^ excluded : but only a logical or conscious separation, 
which is rigidly incidental to the possibilities of their eternal 
spiritual intercourse and conjunction.* And this conscious or 
contingent separation of creature from creator is all that is 
meant by the creator giving him natural selfhood, or quasi life 
in himself. A creative — which of necessity is an infinite — love 
can have no shadow of respect to itself in creating, but only to 
the creature, or what is not itself. Hence its supreme aspira- 
tion must be to lift its creature at any risk out of dumb crea- 
tureship into intelligent sonship, i. e. out of fatal into free con- 
ditions of life, out of necessary into contingent relations with 
itself, by endowing him with self-consciousness (which means 
sensible alienation from, or otherness than, itself), that so his 
subsequent frank and spontaneous reaction towards infinite 
goodness and truth may be eternally secured and promoted. 

It is clear then that while we say God creates the homo, we 
cannot say that he creates, but only that he begets, the vir. 
He creates the natural man, the maximus homo, male and fe- 
male in his own image, — the grand, unconscious, universal, or 
cosmical man, who embraces in himself the entire realm of 
sense, all worlds wandering and fixed, and is attested by every 

* Any conception contrary to this would imply that the creature is life in him- 
self, and not exclusively in the creator - hence, that he is the creator himself 
over again. 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 137 

fact of existence, mineral, vegetable, and animal. But beneath 
the ribs of this sleeping Adam, this wholly unconscious maxhnus 
homo, or universal man, he inwardly builds up the minimus 
homo, the moral or conscious Eve, the petty, specific, domestic 
vir of our actual bosoms, who embraces in himself the entire 
spiritual world, the universe of affection and thought, and to 
whom all the facts of life, i. e. all the events of history, great 
and small, public and private, and all the results of experience, 
good and evil, true and false, exclusively pertain. Give par- 
ticular heed to this discrimination, for it is what emphatically 
distinguishes Swedenborg's intellectual method from that of 
every philosophic system hitherto in vogue ; and if the method 
fail accordingly to justify itself to our understanding in this par- 
ticular, it must utterly fail to do so, since all the data of spiritual 
observation and experience upon which it is based are vitalized 
exclusively by the discrimination in question. 

Let me insist then upon being perfectly understood. 

I am a conscious, which means a composite or unitary, and 
not a simple or absolute, form of life, because I am both object- 
ive and subjective to myself. On my physical side — my fixed, 
organic, passive, maternal side — by which I am related to nature 
or outlying existence, I am my own object. On my moral or 
personal side — my contingent, free, active, or paternal side — 
by which I am related to man or my kind, I am my own subject. 
Now in the former aspect of my existence I am a creature, 
identical with all that exists ; in the latter I am spiritually be- 
gotten or inwardly formed, and hence am consciously individ- 
ualized from whatsoever else that exists. It is indeed obvious 
that in this latter aspect of my personality, I can with no pro- 
priety be said to be created, but only generated or begotten ; 
because it stamps me consciously free, i. e. makes me to my 
own perception praiseworthy or blameworthy as I do well or ill. 
And no mere creature of a superior power can possess con- 
science, because conscience means autonomy or self-rule, and 
self-rule contradicts creatureship. Conscience, or the faculty 
of self-rule, implies that its subject be equal to its object. Thus, 
if God be the proper object and man the proper subject of the 
faculty, it implies so far a spiritual fellowship or equality between 
the two. Hence what I learn from Swedenborg is, that while 



138 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

on my physical or organic side, the side of my natural want, 
of my overpowering appetites and passions, I am God's abject 
creature, and hence wholly unredeemed from the fate which 
impends over mineral, vegetable, and animal, on my moral or 
conscious side, the side of my personal fulness, of my rational 
affection and thought, and the free activity engendered by 
these, I become released from this created vassalage and ele- 
vated into God's spiritual sonship, — the fact of my personal 
consciousness, of my felt selfhood or freedom, being the inex- 
pugnable witness and fruit of the inward and invisible marriage 
which eternally unites the creative and created natures. In a 
word, so far as I am homo, and therefore only physically con- 
scious, being generically identified with all existence, I am 
God's servile creature, knowing fulness and want, to be sure, 
or sensible pleasure and pain, but without any conscience of 
moral, i. e. supersensuous, good and evil. On the contrary, so 
far as I am vir, and therefore morally or personally conscious, 
being formally individualized from all lower existence, and iden- 
tified only with man, I am God's veritable son, being spiritually 
begotten of him through his living absorption in the homo, and 
am consequently endowed with conscience, which is the faculty 
of discerning between good and evil, or, what is the same tiling, 
of freely compelling myself away from a finite and illusory good 
to one which is infinite and real, and so coming at last into the 
deathless fellowship of his perfection. 

This, then, is the remarkable addition made by Swedenborg 
to philosophy, — an addition which it is not too much to say re- 
creates philosophy, or makes it from hitherto standing upon its 
head stand henceforth upon its feet. According to Swedenborg, 
man morally regarded, the vir or conscious man, is divinely be- 
gotten of the homo or cosmical man ; whereas, according to all 
authoritative or recognized philosophy, human nature is a mere 
helpless involution of cosmical nature, and man just as much 
the unlimited creature of God in his moral or specific aspect as 
he is in his physical or generic one. Thus the vulgar concep- 
tion of creation is that nature absolutely separates between God 
and the soul, so that the moral or conscious subject is actually 
distanced from God, in place of being really brought near to 
him, by all the breadth of the cosmos. To Swedenborg this 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBORG. 139 

judgment is the mere dotage of sense. He makes the moral or 
conscious world involve the physical or unconscious one, just as 
cause involves effect, or form substance, or the body its viscera, 
i. e. not as deriving objective being or character from it, of 
course, but subjective existence or constitution. He makes man 
involve mineral, vegetable, and animal, precisely as the statue 
involves the marble, not of course as receiving spiritual form 
from these things, but material body. According to Sweden- 
borg, human nature has no quantitative, but only a qualitative 
manifestation ; what is quantity, substance, or body in it being 
supplied by mineral, vegetable, and animal existence ; what is 
quality, form, or life being supplied by infinite love and wis- 
dom. That is to say, man, in so far as he is man, does not 
exist to sense, but only to consciousness, and consequently 
human nature properly speaking is not a thing of physical but 
of strictly moral attributes. In so far as man exists to sense he 
is identical with mineral, vegetable, and animal ; and it is only 
as he exists to consciousness that he becomes naturally differ- 
enced or individualized from these lower forms, and puts on a 
truly human, which is an exclusively moral, personality."* 

Indeed, Swedenborg's ontological principles compel us to go 
further than this, inasmuch as they stamp the generic element 
in all existence, the element of identity, as strictly phenomenal, 
while they make the specific element, the element of individu- 
ality, alone real. He makes the subjective element in all exist- 
ence — physical existence no less than moral — not real, i. e. 
purely phenomenal, because it is created, or possesses being not 
in itself, but in what is not itself; and he makes reality attach 
only to the objective or formal contents of existence, because 
these are not naturally created, but spiritually begotten. For 
example : the rose in its generic, subjective, or constitutional 
aspect, or in so far as it falls within the sphere of physics, is 
identical with all the other facts of physics, and is therefore 

* Swedenborg makes spiritual perception to consist in the removal or abstraction 
of quantities from qualities. "Thus," he says, "spiritual thought (and spiritual 
affection also) is altogether alien to natural thought; so alien, in fact, as to tran- 
scend natural ideas, and make itself dimly intelligible only to an interior rational 
vision, and this — non aliter quam per abstractiones seu remoliones quantitatum a quali- 
tatibus." See the little tract De Divina Sapientia, VII., 5, at the end of the Apoca- 
lypsis Explicata. 



140 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

without selfhood — that is, without anything to individualize or 
make it differ from universal nature ; without anything to make 
it rose rather than lily or cabbage. But in its specific, object- 
ive, formal, or characteristic aspect, in which it is rose and 
nothing else, i. e. in so far as it transcends the realm of phys- 
ics and falls within that of mind, by becoming permanently 
objective to human affection and thought, it is strictly individ- 
ualized from all other existence, and claims a real or absolute in 
place of a contingent or phenomenal quality ; claims in short 
to exist in its own proper form, in its own distinct and deathless 
individuality, and not alone in mere and sheer identification 
with all other existence. Qua plant the rose is undeniably 
identical with all plant life, just as the horse qua animal is iden- 
tical with all animality. But the rose qua rose, or the horse 
qua horse, is itself and nothing else, being individualized or 
differenced from all other existence. How ? By its alliance 
with the human consciousness, of ichose structure it forms a 
component part. The rose and the horse, which in themselves 
or subjectively possess only a phenomenal existence undistin- 
guishable from all other phenomena, nevertheless objectively, or 
in man, claim a real or absolute significance, being a part of the 
creative logos or word by which alone we love and think and 
speak and act. They are a constituent portion of our mental 
structure, so that if they were away the human mind would be 
to that extent impoverished, or out of correspondence with 
spiritual truth. Neither in universals nor in particulars does 
the mind permit itself to be regarded as of an abstract, but only 
as of a concrete nature. In both spheres alike (the universal 
and the particular) the mind claims to exist before it lives, — 
claims an unconscious substance before it has a conscious form, 
claims an unquickened body before it has a living soul. The 
body or substance of the mind in its universal aspect is identi- 
cal with love, for love is the unconscious life of the homo ; all 
homines — mineral, vegetable, and animal — having sensation, 
and being therefore instinctual forms of affection. The body, or 
substance of the mind, again, in its individual aspect, is truth ; 
for truth is the conscious life of the v ir, all viri — good and 
evil, great and small, wise and simple, able and weak — pos- 
sessing knowledge, and being therefore instinctual forms of in- 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG. 141 

telligence. And neither sensation nor knowledge is an abstract, 
but purely a concrete quality, as no one can either feel or know 
but by an organic contact with the objects of feeling and knowl- 
edge. 

Thus, according to Swedenborg, the generic element in all 
existence, or what identifies and universalizes it, is what stamps 
it phenomenal and perishable ; and the specific element, or what 
individualizes it from all other existence, is what alone stamps it 
real and absolute with all the reality and absoluteness of the 
mind itself. 

But let us take another very important step in advance. 
Man morally regarded, the vir of consciousness, is divinely 
begotten of the homo or physical man ; is an outbirth of the 
divine spirit, not directly, but inversely, through the homo, — 
a precipitate, so to speak, in finite or personal form of the infinite 
love and wisdom pent up, imprisoned, degraded, drowned out in 
the cosmos. But now, if the vir be an inversion of the homo, 
then we must expect to find what is first in the latter (namely, 
substance, the generic or universal principle, which means God 
the creator) becoming last in the former ; and what is last, 
(form, the specific or individual principle, which means man 
the creature) first. Accordingly this is the exact difference the 
vir actually presents to the homo. In the homo the race princi- 
ple, the principle of universality, or community, is everything 
comparatively, and the family principle, the principle of individ- 
uality or difference, is comparatively nothing ; while in the vir 
the family principle is comparatively everything, and the race 
principle comparatively nothing. So that the vir is an un- 
questionable inversion of the homo divinely operated or be- 
gotten. 

But now what is the method of this great achievement? 
How can we rationally conceive of the vir being spiritually be- 
gotten by the divine power out of the homo ? In other words, 
what conceivable ratio is there between the wholly unconscious 
life of mineral, vegetable, and animal, and the wholly conscious 
life of man ? Between the blind instinctual groping of Adam, 
and the clear intelligent will of Eve ? Between the utterly 
unselfish nature of the homo, and the utterly selfish nature of 
the vir? Between the innocence which characterizes all our 



142 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

distinctively humane tendencies and affections, and the guilt 
which stains all our distinctively virtuous ones ? We shall 
easily find the answer to this inquiry, but we must give a new 
chapter to the investigation. 



XXII. 

What is the question we seek to have answered? 

It is a question about the genesis of consciousness, or as to the 
precise nexus that obtains between physical and moral existence. 
We wish to know how the vir is divinely begotten of the homo. 
How does man become extricated from his mineral, vegetable, 
and animal conditions, or stereotyped in properly human, which 
is moral, form ? 

The logical situation out of which the question proceeds can- 
not be too clearly conceived to begin with. It may be thus 
more explicitly restated : — 

What is meant by creating? It means — strictly interpreted 
— giving being to things. Thus when we call God a creator, we 
mean to say that he and he alone gives being to things ; that he 
and he alone constitutes the real or absolute truth of existence. 
But as the giving being to things necessarily implies that the 
things themselves phenomenally or subjectively exist, so the cre- 
ative process involves a subordinate and preliminary process of 
making, or forming, whereby the things created attain to sub- 
jective dimensions. Thus when we say that God creates the 
universe of nature, we explicitly assert indeed that all natural 
existences owe their specific form or variety to him, but we im- 
plicitly affirm also that he gives them generic substance or 
identity as well, since without this as a background or basis their 
specific differences could not appear or exist. The universe is 
not a simple, but a complex phenomenon. It claims finite ex- 
istence in itself as well as infinite being in God ; phenomenal or 
contingent substance as well as real or absolute form ; chaotic 
or communistic subjectivity no less than orderly or diversified 
objectivity ; and what any cosmological doctrine, assuming to be 
philosophically competent, is concerned with specially is the 
former, not the latter, of these claims. The latter claim is self- 
evident. God the creator is himself infinite and eternal, and it 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 143 

is a matter of course, therefore, that he should communicate 
infinite and eternal being to his creature. The difficulty is to 
imagine him giving anything less than this ; that is, to imagine 
him giving the creature finite and temporal existence. This is 
the obvious contradiction involved in the creative problem ; and 
no doctrine of creation accordingly can stand a moment's scru- 
tiny, which does not on its face resolve this contradiction. 

Sensuously conceived, of course creation amounts to a simple 
conjuring trick or magical feat on the part of God, whereby a real 
something is produced out of apparent nothing. But to the 
philosophic apprehension creation means that God gives spiritual 
reality to existence only in so far as he gives it material actual- 
ity ; that he gives specific form or differential quality to things 
only in so far as he endows them with generic substance or 
common quantity. This is the intimate and essential logic of 
the conception, that the objective truth or reality of creation is 
utterly contingent upon its subjective fact or appearance. We 
are ready enough to concede that God qualifies existence, or 
gives it visible form ; but we are by no means so ready to per- 
ceive that he also quantifies it or gives it inward invisible sub- 
stance as well. This latter rSle we conveniently assign to a 
certain metaphysic entity we call Nature, which has no fibre of 
actuality in the absolute truth of things, but which we in our 
ignorance of the creative power superstitiously summon to our aid 
nevertheless, whenever we would intellectually account for ex- 
istence. No doubt we agree that this abstraction called Nature 
had some sort of mysterious being given it "once upon a time" 
by God, in order to quantify -all subsequent forms of life which 
might appear, or give them projection from their creative source; 
indeed we are very forward to maintain creation in this ghastly 
chronic or fossil sense against all disputants. But that creation 
still exists in any acute or living sense of the word, that any 
and every concrete form of nature which we see begotten and 
born in endless series under our eyes, is yet in its measure a 
literal creation of God, deriving its entire actual or material 
substance, no less than its real or spiritual form, from his sole 
and active perfection, — this is a truth of which none of us have 
even any instinctual suspicion, much less any intellectual con- 
viction. 



144 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

Nevertheless, if we would maintain in good faith that the uni- 
verse of existence is created, this is the intellectual obligation in- 
cumbent upon us, namely, to believe in creation as an altogether 
vigorous present reality, and deny its retrospective character, 
under penalty of lapsing into a childish and godless pantheism. A 
true or philosophic doctrine of creation imports that God is able 
to bestow spiritual or objective and unconscious being upon 
things, only by giving them material or subjective and conscious 
existence : and hence binds us if we would understand creation 
save in a superstitious unworthy manner, to cultivate assiduously 
the physical and moral sciences, or the study of nature and 
history. For example : if I should say that God creates the rose, 
what would my words imply to a philosophic ear ? Clearly no 
direct or outward and literal action on God's part whereby the 
rose qua rose — or as to what specifically distinguishes it to 
man's intelligence from cucumber, cabbage, and all other forms 
of existence — is made really or objectively to be ; but rather an 
indirect or inward and spiritual passion on his part, whereby the 
rose qua plant — or as to what generically identifies it to my 
intelligence with all plant life, and through that with all exist- 
ence — is made subjectively to exist or appear. The rose qua 
rose, i. e. as to its metaphysic quality, as to what makes it 
logically appreciable to my intelligence, or stamps it an object 
of human affection and thought, obviously claims to exist in 
itself, claims to exist absolutely, and so far manifestly repugns 
creation. If then I still insist upon proving it created, I can 
only succeed in doing so by showing that it is not created 
directly as rose, — i. e. as to what gives it metaphysic quality, 
or makes it specifically and absolutely to be to my intelligence, 
— but only indirectly as plant, — i. e. as to what gives it phys- 
ical quantity, or makes it generically exist as a contingent fact 
of nature, in organized subjection to the laws of space and 
time.* 

* The rose qua rose has no existence to sensible or direct intuition, nor yet to 
scientific or reflective observation, but only to conscious or living perception, whose 
proper organ is faith. For sense regards only what is exceptional in existence, i. e. 
divine or supernatural; and science only what is normal, i. e. human or natural; 
while faith regards only what is spiritual in existence, or sees the exception and 
the rule, the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the 
relative, blent in the unity of life. In its mineral or inorganic aspect of course the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 145 

Now if all this be true, if it be true that the creative activ- 
ity properly speaking restricts itself to what is public, common, 
generic, universal, or subjective in existence, then it becomes ob- 
vious to the least reflection that the creature as such can have 
no pretension to moral, but only and at most to physical form ; 
i. e. a form in which the generic element is altogether control- 
ling, and the specific element altogether subservient or servile. 
I do not say that moral existence may not supervene to the 
creature's experience upon his creation ; I only insist that it 
cannot be created. For moral existence is not simple but com- 
posite, the moral subject being both objective and subjective to 
himself, or claiming to be self-conscious, i. e. to possess a selfhood 
distinct from all other existence, and hence uncreated ; while 
physical existence is simple or purely subjective, the physical 
subject not being his own object, but finding his proper objectiv- 
ity outside of himself, and hence without self-consciousness : the 
exact distinction between the two being that in physical order 
the generic or substantial element, i. e. what gives subjectivity, 
rules, and the specific or formal element, i. e. what gives ob- 
jectivity, serves ; whereas in moral order, a distinctively con- 
verse state of things obtains, form or species being primary, 
substance or genus altogether secondary. 

We may say then without fear of contradiction that the sphere 
of creation is identical in strict philosophic speech with the 
realm of physics, and excludes moral or metaphysical existence. 
In other words, we may say that God creates the homo alone ; 
that is, gives being to man only in physical form, or in min- 
eral, vegetable, and animal proportions ; this limitation moreover 
upon the created nature being enforced by the creative perfec- 
tion. For God is love — love infinite and eternal, as knowing 
no drawback of self-love — and whatsoever he creates or gives 
being to consequently cannot help turning out a purely sub- 
jective form of existence, as realizing its proper life in the uses 

rose exists to sense, whose office is to affirm the absolute in existence ; and qua 
plant or on its organic side it exists equally of course to science, whose office is to 
affirm the relative in existence. But qua rose, or in so far forth as it is itself alone, 
characteristically individualized from all other existence, being neither mineral nor 
vegetable, neither absolnte nor relative, but the living unity of the two, it exists 
only to life or consciousness, and is affirmed only by faith which is the organ of life 
or consciousness. It is, in short, a mere index to the creative logos. 
10 



146 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

it promotes to something beyond itself. But a purely subjective 
form of existence is a servile or impersonal form, being destitute 
of all objective accord with, or intellection of, the uses it pro- 
motes to other existence. The sphere of creation properly 
speaking claims accordingly to be rigidly identical with the 
universe of nature, inasmuch as natural existence of whatever 
stripe, mineral, vegetable, or animal, is strictly servile or im- 
personal, being what it is and doing what it does in spite of 
itself, or without its own rational concurrence. 

Observe well what has just been said. If God is love infinite 
and eternal, then whatsoever he creates or gives being to must 
image this spiritual or individual perfection of his only in a 
natural or universal way, by avouching itself at best an in- 
stinctual which is a servile and lifeless form of love, exhibiting 
only an interested subserviency to other existence. This limi- 
tation is obligatory upon the creature by virtue of its creation, 
which is its essential distinction from the creator. The creator, 
being by the hypothesis of creation both infinite (as having 
no limitation ab intra) and absolute (as knowing no limitation 
ah extra), is the one individual, while the creature, being by the 
hypothesis of creation finite (as self-limited,) and relative (as 
limited by what is not-self), is the one universal, i. e. the many. 
Consequently the creature must be in himself universality with- 
out any admixture of individuality, since otherwise he would 
be undistinguishable from his creative source. If there were 
the least flavor of individuality attaching to his universality, he 
would transcend his nature as a creature, or put on moral 
lineaments ; for moral existence is not created but begotten. 

But universal existence — existence which is purely generic 
or subjective, and noway specific or objective — is simple, and 
therefore chaotic : it is me without any thee or Mm to finite it, 
or render it morally conscious. Thus the homo divinely created 
(the universal man, Adam or earth) is in its own nature a 
chaos, and only by regeneration a cosmos. The bare fact of 
its creatureship stamps it " without form and void," i. e. with- 
out human or moral form, and void of rational or internal 
consciousness ; for it cannot help being precisely what it is, 
and doing precisely what it does, inasmuch as all its life and 
action are imposed upon it by its creation. It is necessarily 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 147 

and utterly void of objective worth or character, — doing uses 
not spontaneously or of itself, but altogether instinctively or of 
natural constraint, — because, being a created existence, the 
creator is everything in it and itself nothing. Hence it must 
forever remain a mere dead or stagnant image — a strictly neg- 
ative or inverse correspondence — of the creative perfection, 
unless the creative resources are so commanding as to supply 
this inherent defect of the created nature, and convert its in- 
veterate death into exuberant life, by begetting a vir everyway 
answerable to the immortal want of the homo, or bringing forth 
a human, which is a moral or individual form, everyway com- 
mensurate with the universality of mineral, vegetable, and 
animal existence. 

Thus the truth of creation invincibly implies that the crea- 
ture bear a purely formal or outward and objective relation to 
the creator, while the creator sustains a strictly substantial or 
inward and subjective relation to the creature. The creator 
must constitute the sole and total subjectivity of the creature, 
and the creature in its turn must constitute the sole and total 
objectivity of the creator. No doubt that creation in this state 
of things will wear a sufficiently unhandsome aspect, inasmuch 
as the creature will lavishly appropriate, or make its own, what- 
soever it finds of the creative personality thus invincibly subject 
to it. But its action in that case will be simple, not composite ; 
i. e. will be wholly instinctual or fatal, and noway moral, ra- 
tional, or free, as implying any consciousness of personality on its 
part, or any sentiment of difference between it and the creator. 
In short, the creature, qua a creature, will be a very good min- 
eral, vegetable, or even animal existence, but it will have no pre- 
tension to the human form. It may claim mineral body, fixity, 
or rest, vegetable growth, and animal motion, but the fact of its 
creatureship must always inhibit it attaining to human, which 
are exclusively moral dimensions. 

We have the amplest warrant then to deny that moral exist- 
ence, or human nature, is included in creation proper ; to deny 
that man is God's proper creature save as homo, i. e. on his 
organic, passive, unconscious side, in which he is physically iden- 
tified with mineral, vegetable, and animal existence; while as 
vir, i. e. on his free, active, or self-conscious side, in which he is 



148 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

morally individualized from all other existence, he is manifestly 
the only begotten son of God. We read accordingly in the 
symbolic Genesis, that while all lower things take name from 
man (or derive their quality from their various relation to the 
human form), man himself (Adam or the homo) remains void 
of self-consciousness, void of moral or personal quality, remains 
in short wholly unvivified by the vir, until creation itself gives 
place to redemption, or nature becomes complicated with history, 
in that remarkable divine intervention described as the formation 
of Eve or the woman out of the man's rib : by which event is 
symbolized of course an inward or spiritual divine fermentation 
in man which issues at last in his moral consciousness, or his 
becoming subjective as well as objective to himself. The entire 
mythical history amounts in philosophic import to this : that the 
homo or physical man, divinely created, is utterly distinct from 
the vir or moral man divinely begotten out of the other ; hence 
that humanity could never have attained to personal conscious- 
ness, could never have put on human as contradistinguished from 
mere animal lineaments, could never in short have drawn a 
breath of moral or rational life, unless the merciful illusion had 
been granted it to look upon itself not as exclusively objective to 
God, which is the eternal truth of things, but rather as exclu- 
sively subjective to him, which is the mere fallacious semblance 
of things. For how shall created existence ever be properly 
subject to its creator ? By the very terms of the proposition its 
entire subjectivity resides in the creator; and how therefore 
shall it even so much as seem to be subjective to him, unless he 
graciously defer to its deep spiritual necessities by becoming 
himself formally reproduced within the created nature, or put- 
ting on finite and phenomenal form in the vir? 

The interesting question, I repeat, then, to philosophy is, "What 
is the method of this hidden or spiritual divine operation ? How 
is the vir (Eve) actually begotten of the homo (Adam) ? How 
is moral life generated of mere physical existence ? How does 
the dull opaque earth of our nature become translucent with 
heavenly radiance ? How does the mere natural or lifeless 
image of God become converted into his spiritual or living like- 
ness ? How does God's dumb unconscious creature become 
glorified into his conscious son ? In a word, how does the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 149 

chaotic darkness which invests universal nature, mineral, vege- 
table, and animal, become gradually lifted or effaced in the 
light, order, and beauty which characterize man's individual 
intelligence ? For it is only Eve, divinely quickened, who brings 
the carnal, gross, and grovelling Adam to final and adequate 
self-consciousness ; only the vir (the private specific man) who 
is able to mirror or reproduce the homo (the public generic 
man) to himself. The symbolic Adam is "in a deep sleep," 
while Eve is being divinely quickened within him. He has no 
suspicion that she is formed out of his own lifeless clay ; that 
she is only his own relentless unconscious death divinely fash- 
ioned into quasi or conscious life ; that she is but the phe- 
nomenal revelation of the most real but unrecognized being 
which he himself has exclusively in God. He regards her on 
the contrary as an absolute divine benefaction, cleaving to her as 
flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, and betraying no mis- 
giving — any more than we his distant descendants do at this 
day — that the divinity with which she is instinct is one with 
his own base flesh and blood, or inseparable from his lowest 
mineral, vegetable, and animal characteristics. He takes it for 
granted indeed — just as we his unintelligent offspring have 
done ever since — that the selfhood or freedom of which he is 
made sensibly cognizant in the person of the woman, is an un- 
conditional divine surrender to him, is its own all-sufficient end, 
being given to him for its own sake exclusively, and with no 
view to any ulterior spiritual advantage.* 

Let me repeat my question once more then. How does this 
subjective equation of the creative and created natures, which is 
implied in all the phenomena of consciousness, actually come 
about? Moral existence implies such a literal indistinction of 
creator and creature in all subjective regards, such an unstinted 
vivification of the lower nature by the higher, such an absolute 
identification of what is properly infinite in creation (substance) 
with what is properly finite (form), as necessarily makes God 
and man convertible quantities, or abases the divine to human, 
and exalts the human to divine proportions. Our intelligence 
consequently brooks no arbitrary refusal in its research after the 
rationale of this stupendous creative achievement. It is the 
* See Appendix, Note F. 



150 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

urgent insatiate problem both of the world's dawning spiritual 
faith, and of its dawning spiritual science, to know how the vir 
becomes divinely begotten of the homo, how moral life is bred 
of physical decay, how spirit is born of flesh, or nature is 
quickened out of mineral, vegetable, and animal into human or 
moral form. And the altogether sufficing solution, as it seems 
to me, which Swedenborg gives the problem, may be stated 
substantially as follows. 

The vir is begotten of the liomo (or nature becomes spiritually 
vivified) exclusively through the instrumentality of conscience, 
which is a living though tacit divine word in every created 
bosom, leading it to aspire only after infinite knowledge. Con- 
science does not give this counsel to the homo in direct or explicit, 
but only in indirect or implicit terms. Its precept is negative, not 
positive, saying, " thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil (i. e. finite knowledge), for in the day thou 
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Two trees grow in the 
garden of the created intelligence, which cannot be eaten of 
simultaneously : one called the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil, i. e. the knowledge of the finite, whose fruit is death ; 
the other the tree of life, i. e. the knowledge of the infinite, 
whose fruit is immortal life. Or to drop figurative and con- 
fine oui-selves to scientific speech, there are two sources of 
knowledge practicable to the created bosom : 1. Experience, 
which gives us self-knowledge ; 2. Revelation, which gives 
us divine knowledge. And by Adam's being told " that he 
should die if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil," is symbolized that law of human destiny which makes 
the seeming life but most lethal death we encounter in our- 
selves, or reap from our plrysical and moral experience, alto- 
gether subordinate and ministerial to the seeming death but 
most vital life we realize in God, or reap from our spiritual and 
historic culture — from our social and aesthetic regeneration. 

Conscience in its literal or subjective requirements has respect 
exclusively to the homo ; and it is only as a spiritual or ob- 
jective administration that it contemplates the vir. It is to 
Adam alone, not Eve, that the prohibition to eat of the tree 
of knowledge is addressed; and though Eve in her dialogue 
with the serpent chooses to associate herself with Adam in the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 151 

prohibition, and even superstitiously aggravates its force by 
alleging that they were forbidden also to touch the tree, the 
step is a strictly gratuitous one on her part, having no other 
warrant than her own instinctive identification of herself with 
Adam. The reason why Adam alone is forbidden to eat of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil — in other and less figurative 
terms, the reason why conscience as a letter has to do only with 
the animal, and not with the moral or rational man — is very 
obvious. It is that Adam is the abject creature of God, and 
hence is blindly instinct with — though by no means intelli- 
gently conscious of — the creative infinitude or perfection ; and 
to suppose him therefore " eating of the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil " with impunity, i. e. finding life in his finite 
experience, is expressly to affront and mutilate his creatureship. 
Unquestionably what is mere "instinct" in the creature will 
eventually undergo conversion into will and intelligence ; in 
other words, man will infallibly outgrow his animal conscious- 
ness, and attain at length to truly human proportions, when he 
will no longer blindly or instinctively, but freely or spontane- 
ously, react to the creative impulsion. And this being the case, 
his moral or rational experience, his experience of selfhood or 
freedom (symbolized by Eve, or the woman), becomes incident- 
ally inevitable, because his free, spontaneous, or spiritual reac- 
tion towards the creator is rigidly contingent upon such experi- 
ence. But it is strictly incidental, and no way final, its total 
purpose being to afford the creature that phenomenal or generic 
projection from God which alone may motive his subsequent 
real or specific conjunction with him. Conscience is the verita- 
ble spirit of God in the created nature, seeking to become the crea- 
ture's own spirit ; and it can only do this, of course, in so far as 
it first of all leads the creature intelligently to apprehend and 
appreciate the distance between God and himself; between in- 
finite love and wisdom and finite affection and thought ; between 
his nature and his culture ; between his inheritance and his des- 
tiny ; between his physical and his moral consciousness ; in 
short, between what gives him objective being to his own eyes as 
homo, and what gives him only subjective existence or appear- 
ance as vir. It is the final, not the immediate, office of conscience 
to reveal man to himself as a unit of two forces, one infinite, the 



152 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBOEG. 

other finite ; one spiritual, the other material ; one specific or 
private, the other generic or public ; so vindicating at last the 
sole and supreme truth of the divine natural humanity. Until 
this great end is fully wrought out, — i. e. so long as the truth 
of the divine natural humanity remains a mere letter or tradi- 
tion, and is not spiritually or livingly believed, — the moral or 
rational man seems of course to be the true end of the divine 
providence upon earth, whereas he is a strictly mediate end to 
the evolution of society ; and all sorts of reproach, contumely, and 
humiliation consequently attach meanwhile to the divine name. 

Thus we must not for a moment forget that selfhood or moral 
poise has a purely constitutional and by no means a causative 
efficacy in the evolution of creation. That is to say, it is 
what makes the creature phenomenally exist, but it has noth- 
ing directly to do with conferring real being upon him. It 
gives him subjective consciousness, or the appearance of being 
to himself; but it is very far indeed from constituting his ob- 
jective or real being in the divine sight. For the creator 
alone constitutes the being of the creature ; and it is only in so 
far as lie ignores the creator consequently, that the creature 
attributes being to himself. Thus the creature's self-knowledge 
or subjective consciousness is inexorably conditioned upon his 
sheer and absolute ignorance of the creative perfection ; i. e. of 
what gives him objective and unconscious being, or makes him 
a reality to God ; what we call his selfhood being a mere 
ratio or means to the evolution of a spiritual life in him, and 
having absolutely no other force. By the sheer fact of his 
creatureship he is void of selfhood or moral force, void of 
the human form or quality ; and yet by the same irresistible 
necessity he aspires to it with all his might. For how un- 
worthy it would be of the creative infinitude to content itself 
with leaving its creature a mere animate existence, utterly in- 
capable of private or interior sympathy with itself! The sole 
justification of the creator in creating — i. e. in vivifying an 
inferior and opposite form of existence to himself — flows from 
the hypothesis that he is infinite, as having no regard to himself 
in creation but only to his creature, and intending to exalt 
the latter to the plenary fellowship of his perfection. None 
but the creator knows and, knowing, resents the limitations of 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG 153 

the created nature. None out he knows that the profoundest 
want and hence the controlling love of the creature is self- 
hood or freedom, and that to expect it to be anything or 
do anything incompatible with this fundamental want, or until 
its love of self is fully satisfied, would be a heartless mock- 
ery of its constitutional infirmity. He consequently breathes 
in the Adamic or created bosom no absolute, but an altogether 
qualified or conditional injunction, designed in the first place 
to keep it at bottom innocent under whatever superficial issues 
may subsequently arise to obscure that innocence, and in the 
second to stimulate and fashion in it the precise moral or 
rational consciousness in which as being created it is deficient. 
" Thou shalt not eat of the tree, etc., foe in the day thou 
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Thus while conscience 
accommodates its utterances with the utmost strictness to the 
needs of the created nature, or makes the evolution of spiritual 
life in the creature, in his love to God and love to the neighbor, 
rigidly contingent upon his amplest previous experience and 
exhaustion of the death he has in himself, we at the same 
time learn from the symbolic narrative that this death which 
conscience brings to light in man is no vengeful judgment — no 
unworthy penal infliction — on the part of God, but on the con- 
trary a strictly constitutional incident, or physiological necessity, 
of our immortal spiritual' life. For is not Adam represented as 
saying — in full and reverent explanation of his fall, and at the 
same time in full and reverent attestation of his faith in God — 
the woman thou gavest with me, she gave me of the tree, and 
I did eat f Could anything more perfectly avouch his in- 
tegrity so far as any real or spiritual offence towards God is 
implicated in the transaction, than the fact that he was led to do 
as he did by the irresistible influence of God's own best gift 
to him? Accordingly the inspired tradition, though it repre- 
sents him duly incurring the death denounced upon his trans- 
gression — that death to our instinctual innocence and peace 
which is involved in every breath of the moral or voluntary 
consciousness — by no means reports him as having become 
personally obnoxious to the divine dislike. The serpent, which 
in symbolic speech denotes the senses, is cursed above all cattle, 
that is, is made to grovel upon the earth, because it misled the 



154 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

woman ; and the ground, by which is symbolized man's external 
life, is cursed for the marts sake; the symbolic import of the 
otherwise puerile story being, that men should be led betimes by 
the evils which beset their outward life inwardly to renounce 
their physical and moral genesis, which is a purely phenomenal 
one, and cultivate instead their social and aesthetic aptitudes, 
which alone are divinely real. But neither Adam nor Eve is 
pictured as encountering the least personal inclemency at the 
hands of God. So far is this from being the case, that Eve, 
who was the leader in the transgression, hears a gracious prom- 
ise of blessing and victory made in behalf of her prospective 
offspring. 

Conscience then is the sovereign link or point of transition for 
which we have been seeking between moral and physical ex- 
istence. In conscience the moral which is the individual or 
differential element in nature becomes disengaged from the 
physical, which is its strictly universal or identical clement, and 
the conscious vir absorbs the unconscious homo in his deathless 
embrace, never henceforth to be reproduced save in the spir- 
itual or regenerate lineaments of a perfect human society. 
That is to say, nothing is really universal but individuality ; 
what we call the universal element in nature, meaning thereby 
what gives genus or substance to things, having no existence in 
itself, but being a mere implication of the individual element, 
which gives sjyecies or form: just as the viscera of the body and 
the works of a watch have no existence in themselves, or apart 
from the forms in which they constitutionally inhere. In other 
words, the creator is the sole reality of the creature, while the 
creature is only an appearance or manifestation of that reality ; 
and as the creator is infinitely individual — which means that he 
is individual to the exclusion of universality or community — 
so consequently what we without misgiving call the universe of 
nature, and conceive upon the testimony of our senses to be 
absolute, is utterly destitute of being, and confesses itself a mere 
appanage of the human form. In the infancy of the human 
mind, no doubt the truth seems exactly contrary to this. So 
long as the subjugation of nature is not only unachieved but 
almost unbegun — i. e. while man's spiritual evolution is still in 
abeyance to the satisfaction of his physical and moral wants — 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBOEG. 155 

nature seems the only real, and man a strictly contingent exist- 
ence ; man himself being meanwhile a squalid savage, content 
to live in abject dependence upon nature's caprice, and eke out 
a beggarly subsistence upon the scraps her niggard larder affords 
him. This, however, is but the initiament of human history. 
Man can afford to sink his foundations very low, because he is 
destined to build very high ; destined, in fact, eventually to house 
the creative infinitude in himself. Infinite love and wisdom are 
his source, and as he cannot help spiritually returning sooner or 
later to his source, it is expedient and even inevitable that his 
merely natural genesis should degrade him below all mineral, 
vegetable, and animal possibilities, degrade him in short to hell, 
that so he may thence more efficiently react or rebound towards 
his appropriate spiritual destiny. Thus no matter to what depths 
of savagery his native instincts of infinitude originally incline 
him, erelong the indwelling though unrecognized divine word or 
logos begins to inspire his consciousness, and lift him out of 
ignorance into knowledge, out of imbecility into wisdom, out of 
bondage into freedom, out of penury into plenty. 

Undoubtedly all this while man is the victim of a stupendous 
though most merciful illusion. For he all the while regards him- 
self not merely as consciously or phenomenally disjoined with 
God by nature, but as really or absolutely so, and hence strives 
though in vain to conjoin himself anew by the zealous cultivation 
and practice of virtue. He strives in vain, because virtue in 
proportion to the sharpness of its aims, and the earnestness of its 
aspirations, shuts the votary up to himself, or separates him from 
his fellow, while all the resources of the divine providence are 
leagued to break down human isolation or selfishness, and exalt 
the broadest human fellowship to its place. But man in his 
moral beginnings has no intuition of this truth. The beginnings 
of conscience in us invariably exhibit the vir, or moral and con- 
scious subject, freely identifying himself with the finite and cre- 
ated side of things, that is, with the homo or physical and uncon- 
scious man [thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule 
over thee'], while he recoils at the same time in abject dread and 
estrangement from the spiritual world, or the infinite and crea- 
tive side of existence. How, indeed, could it be otherwise ? 
How is it possible that I, when all my feeling and knowledge 



156 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 

stamp me to my own perception as finite, or ally me exclusively 
•with nature, should ever worthily apprehend my invisible spir- 
itual source, ever feel myself to be inwardly enfranchised of God, 
ever see in the balanced good and evil of the moral world only 
a stupendous mask of the creative presence, behind which, in 
silence and secrecy, it slowly but surely builds up for itself a 
faultless temple of inhabitation in our nature ? The thing is 
manifestly impossible. My physical organization itself baffles 
every such conception of truth on my part ; for isolating me as 
it does to my own consciousness from all other men, and rele- 
gating me to the perpetually recurring sway of my finite neces- 
sities, it makes the rise of any really spiritual or divine worth 
in me rigorously attributable, not to a spontaneous evolution of 
my nature, but to the exercise of a more or less severe self-de- 
nial on my part. And self-denial is the very essence of virtue. 
Thus to all the extent of my peculiar virtus, manhood, or moral 
consciousness, I of necessity antagonize all other men, deny their 
fellowship or equality, feel my self to be at essential and interne- 
cine odds with theirs, in short proclaim myself an utterly unso- 
cial or selfish being; and so practically refer all true virtus — 
all real manhood — to a divine and infinite personality. 

Conscience is thus the true and living matrix in which the 
infinite creative substance puts on finite created form. All the 
phenomena of our moral history go to show the homo or created 
man, the man of interior affection and thought, utterly uncon- 
scious of the infinite goodness and truth which alone give him 
being, and joyfully allying himself with the vir or finite conscious 
man, the man of mere organic appetite and passion, who gives 
him contingent existence only, or renders him phenomenal to 
himself; shows him, as the symbolic narrative phrases it, "leav- 
ing his father and mother, and cleaving unto his wife until they 
become one flesh." In this way the creature, from being only 
physically objective to the creator (as the clock is to its maker, 
or the statue to its sculptor), becomes morally subject to him (as 
the wife is to the husband, or the child to the parent) ; while 
the creator, in his turn, from being literally constitutional to the 
creature (as substance is to form, or the material of a house to 
the house itself), becomes spiritually creative of it (as form is 
creative of substance, or a house creative of its material). This 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 157 

is the grand secret of creation, the dense and otherwise impene- 
trable mystery of our nature and history, that a certain inver- 
sion is divinely operated in the field of consciousness, whereby 
the homo or merely created man, who is wholly unconscious 
and therefore undistinguishable from his creator, being a mere 
universal or animal and passive force, becomes taken up into the 
vir, or puts on the semblance of an individual or moral and ac- 
tive force, and so attains to self-consciousness or that apparently 
absolute projection from his creative source, which is the need- 
ful prerequisite of his subsequent spiritual reaction towards it. 
And conscience is the dazzling inscrutable mask under which 
this great divine operation conceals itself. It is in reality 
a subtle and exquisite mirror wherein all the imperfection 
inherent in the abstract unconscious nature of the creature, or 
in mineral, vegetable, and animal existence, emerges, i. e. 
becomes luminously reproduced or reflected in his concrete, 
conscious self; and all the perfection consequently which is 
inherent in his creative source becomes for the time hopelessly 
immersed, i. e. obscured if not obliterated. Please observe that 
there is nothing arbitrary in the inversion thus alleged to be 
wrought in conscience. For if, as we have seen, the vir or con- 
crete conscious man be the offspring of divine or infinite power 
begotten out of the homo, or abstract unconscious human nature, 
then it is evident to a glance that his individuality must constitute 
an exact and veritable equation of these unequal factors: i. e. must 
be perfectly commensurate on its inward, spiritual, or paternal 
side with all the resources of infinite or creative love ; and on 
its outward, material, or maternal side with all the defects of 
mineral, vegetable, and animal, or simply created existence: 
so that the only true subject of conscience, the only one who 
really fulfils all its righteousness, must be at once perfectly 
divine and perfectly human — or perfectly infinite and perfectly 
finite — in his proper person. 



XXIII. 

Let me here observe that my reader would greatly mistake the 
true state of the case, if he should suppose me animated by any 
personal designs towards him; if he should suppose me, for 



158 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 



example, aiming to convert him from a sceptical to a believing 
state of mind. I Lave, indeed, far too much reverence for the 
divine prerogative in all things spiritual, to attempt substituting 
my own foolish reasonings for his unerring initiative. I have 
not the least ambition to modify my reader's religious convic- 
tions, or invade in any manner the sacred precincts of his 
heart. My aim in writing is exclusively philosophic, not 
religious. It is not to persuade, but only to instruct. I would 
not if I could persuade any one who doubts the truth of creation 
to believe in it, because I am sure that my labor would be soon 
undermined in that case by the hidden currents of his soul. 
But I have a great desire to commend this truth itself to men's 
speculative regard, that they may know both what is philosophi- 
cally included in it, and what is philosophically excluded from it, 
and so feel themselves at perfect liberty thenceforth to obey 
their hearts' supreme instincts without fear or favor. To this 
end, and this end solely, I have shown that creation deals only 
with universal, or stops short in physics, hence that man on his 
moral or distinctively human side is not a creature of God, but 
a son spiritually begotten, and that the method of his generation 
is identical with the authority of conscience. 

But here let us be frank with ourselves. Such extremely 
vague notions in regard to the nature and function of conscience 
are unhappily prevalent, not only in vulgar but in technically 
enlightened minds, that we shall hardly be able to proceed a step 
further, intelligently, without some preliminary clearing of the 

\xraxr 



wav 



Conscience is commonly interpreted as a divine revelation to 
the intellect, whereby men are put in favorable relation to truth 
or moral science. That is, it is not thought to possess a con- 
stitutive efficacy with respect to moral existence, but only a 
regulative one. Thus it is by no means commonly reputed to 
be the exclusive organ or voucher of the difference which all 
men recognize between good and evil, infinite and finite, God 
and man ; on the contrary, this difference is assumed to be some- 
how absolute and eternal, and conscience is regarded as comino- 
in thereupon merely to prescribe the duties which are appropri- 
ate to the relation. And it is astonishing to observe the amount 
of cleverness men sometimes waste in attempting to demonstrate 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 159 

the fallacy of this alleged revelation, on the ground that some 
men are wont to deem that right which others deem wrong, and 
that wrong which others deem right. I say this cleverness is 
wasted, because it is addressed *after all to the refutation of a 
false theory of the moral instinct. No doubt the widest diversi- 
ties of opinion and practice obtain among equally conscientious 
races : and why not ? For conscience was never intended to 
operate a direct restraint either upon the affections or the 
thoughts of men, but only indirectly upon the action in which 
affection and thought legitimately issue, and in which alone 
they permanently reside. It was never intended to produce any 
uniformities of intellectual culture or conventional practice among 
men, but only to avouch the human principle itself, under every 
contrasted form of culture and practice, by sharply discrimi- 
nating man from the brute, or antagonizing moral and physical 
existence. It was intended in short only to signalize the funda- 
mental discrepancy which exists between the human form and 
all lower forms of life, as lying in the absolute right of property, 
or exclusive power of control, which every man as man attrib- 
utes to himself with respect to his own action. 

Hence if men had not conscience — i. e. if they had no inward 
'perception of the inexpugnable difference between good and evil, 
high and low, infinite and finite, Crod and man, which is exactly 
what conscience affirms, and is all that it affirms — they would 
not be men, but animals, inasmuch as they would be no longer 
masters, but slaves of their organic appetites and passions. The 
distinctive quality of manhood lies in its subject's ability to 
recognize a law of action for himself superior to pleasure and 
pain, in his power to discern a good more intimate than any 
particular gratification of his appetites and passions, and an evil 
more poignant than any particular postponement of them. And 
this power he derives exclusively from conscience, i. e. from a 
supreme divine presence, or living divine word, in his soul, affirm- 
ing the inextinguishable contrariety of good and evil. Thus the 
seat of conscience is neither the affections, nor the intellect, but 
the life. Its primary office is not to tell us what is good and true, 
or teach us how to feel and think, but to tell us wdiat is evil and 
false, or teach us what to avoid. Its aim, in a word, is not to 
regulate our opinions, but our practice ; not to mould our senti- 



160 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

ments, but our lives. Were men without it then, they would 
be like the animals, utterly indifferent to the quality of their ac- 
tions. Manhood is not primarily physical and derivatively moral. 
On the contrary, it is primarily moral and only derivatively phys- 
ical. In other words, my action is not mine because my heart 
conceived, and my thought planned, and my hand executed it: 
a thousand acts, claiming just this sort of affiliation to me, I daily 
loathe and disown : but simply because my conscience approves 
it ; i. e. because I inwardly feel it to be right and not wrong for 
me to have done it, and hence gladly identify myself with it. 
It is childish accordingly to attempt discrediting conscience as a 
divine regimen, merely because it allows and even authenticates 
the most contrarious intellectual judgments among men. It is 
an instinct of the soul, not an intuition of the reason, much less 
an induction of the understanding. If accordingly the sceptic, 
instead of pursuing his present tactics, would seek to invalidate 
conscience as the soul's own instinct of deity, by showing that it 
is as such an uncertain light, declaring no absolute or real, but 
only a contingent or phenomenal opposition between good and 
evil, between God and man, between infinite and finite, then I 
admit his effort would be more reputable in point of logic, but 
certainly quite as fruitless in point of result. For conscience is 
not what it is commonly reputed to be, a mere miraculous 
endowment of human nature, liable therefore to all the vicissi- 
tudes of men's hereditary temperament, much less is it a mere 
divine trust to the intellect of men, liable, therefore, to all the 
vicissitudes of our natural genius and understanding. On the 
contrary, and in truth, it is the divine natural humanity itself ; 
and its light, consequently, is as clear and unflickcring as that 
of the sun at noondav, which in fact is but the servile imao-e of 
its uncreated splendor. 

No better proof can be desired of the truth here alleged, 
namely, that conscience masks the actual divine presence itself 
in human nature, than the fact that every man is inexorably 
characterized or spiritually individualized by it to his own per- 
ception. That is to say, every man unhesitatingly pronounces 
himself either good or evil relatively to all other men, precisely 
as he obeys or disobeys it. And certainly no law has power to 
stamp me, a free subject, good or evil to my own profoundest 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 161 

conviction, unless it be an essentially formative law, the law of 
my very being or form as man. The only valid, natural superiority 
I can claim to the animal lies in the fact that I have conscience, 
and he has not. And the only valid moral superiority I can claim 
to my fellow-man is, that I am more hearty in my allegiance to it, 
and. he less hearty. Thus deeper than my intellect, deeper than 
my heart, deeper in fact than aught and all that I recognize as 
myself, or am wont to call emphatically me, is this dread omnipo- 
tent power of conscience which now soothes me with the voice, 
and nurses me with the milk of its tenderness, as the mother 
soothes and. nurses her child, and anon scourges me with the lash 
of its indignation, as the father scourges his refractory heir. 

But this is only telling half the story. It is very true that 
conscience is the sole arbiter of good and evil to man ; and that 
persons of a literal and superficial cast of mind — persons of a 
good hereditary temperament — may easily fancy themselves in 
spiritual harmony with it, or persuade themselves and others that 
they have fully satisfied every claim of its righteousness. But 
minds of a deeper quality soon begin to suspect that the demands of 
conscience are not so easily satisfied, soon discover in feet that it 
is a ministration of death exclusively, and not of life, to which 
they are abandoning themselves. For what conscience inevitably 
teaches all its earnest adepts erelong is, to give up the hopeless 
effort to reconcile good and evil in their own practice, and learn 
to identify themselves, on the contrary, with the evil principle 
alone, while they assign all good exclusively to God. Thus no 
man of a sincere and honest intellectual make has ever set him- 
self seriously to cultivate conscience with a view to its spiritual 
emoluments — i. e. with a view to placate the divine righteous- 
ness — without speedily discovering that every such hope is 
illusory, that peace flees from him just in proportion to the eager- 
ness with which he covets it. In other words, no man, not a 
fool, since the beginning of history, has ever deliberately set him- 
self " to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil " — i. e. 
to prosecute Ms moral instincts until he should become inwardly 
assured of God's personal complacency in him — without finding 
death and not life to his soul, without his inward and spiritual 
obliquity being sooner or later made to abound in the exact ratio 
of his moral or outward rectitude. I have no idea, of course, 
11 



162 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 

that a man may not be beguiled by the insinuating breath of 
sense into believing himself spiritually or in the depths just 
what he appears to be morally or in the shallows. Vast 
numbers of persons, indeed, are to be found in every community, 
who — having as yet attained to no spiritual insight or under- 
standing — are entirely content with, nay, proud of, the moral 
" purple and fine linen " with which they are daily decked out 
in the favorable esteem of their friends, and are meanwhile at 
hearty peace with themselves. All this in fact is strictly inevi- 
table to our native and cultivated fatuity in spiritual things ; but 
I am not here concerned with the fact in the way either of 
denial or of confirmation. What I here mean specifically to say 
is, that every one in whom, to use a common locution of 
Swedenborg, " the spiritual degree of the mind has been 
opened," finds conscience no friend, but an impassioned foe to 
his moral righteousness or complacency in himself, and hence to 
his personal repose in God. For example : conscience limits 
my self-love, or zeal for my own welfare, to a just or equal zeal 
for the welfare of my fellow-men ; that is to say, it suspends 
all my hope of personal righteousness upon my practically de- 
ferring to my brother to such an extent — in case of any conflict 
between us — as that the interests of absolute justice be promot- 
ed, if need be, at any personal cost to myself, and any personal 
advantage to my rival. But it is the very essence of sell-love to 
spurn control, and make one's own welfare the practical measure 
of the welfare of other men. Hence, and of necessity, con- 
science wears an implacable front towards the vir or specific in- 
terest in humanity, unless the latter conciliate it by freely ac- 
cepting death at its hands, or, what is the same thing, studiously 
compelling itself into all manner of actual conformity to the 
homo or generic interest. 

A living death then, which is a death to all one's distinctively 
personal pretension, is the sentence which conscience enforces in 
the breast of every child of A flam who attempts seriously to ful- 
fil its righteousness. It is indeed idle to conceive that any mere 
child of Adam should ever be able, while the world stands, pos- 
itively to fulfil the law of conscience, or avouch himself a true 
unit of the divine and human natures. A stream cannot mount 
above its source, and no mere creature of God will ever be able 



THE SECERT OF SWEDENBOEG. 163 

to transcend his nature, and attain to God's spiritual sonship. 
Even if such an aspiration were possible to him, it would be de- 
feated by its own genesis, since the only motive it could attest 
on his part would be an unsocial or selfish one, consisting in the 
lust of personal aggrandizement. When I earnestly aspire to 
fulfil the divine law — when I earnestly strive after moral or 
personal excellence — my aim unquestionably is to lift myself 
above the level of human nature, or attain to a place in the 
divine regard unshared by the average of my kind ; unshared 
by the liar, the thief, the adulterer, the murderer. But the 
same law which discountenances false-witness, theft, adultery, 
and murder binds me also not to covet : i. e. not to desire for 
myself what other men do not enjoy : so that the law which 
I fondly imagined was designed to give me life turns out a 
subtle ministry of death, and in the very crisis of my moral 
exaltation fills me with the profoundest spiritual humiliation and 
despair. It is an instinct doubtless of the divine life in me to 
hate false-witness, theft, adultery, and murder, and actually to 
avert myself from these evils whenever I am naturally tempted 
to do them. But then I must hate them for their own sake, 
exclusively, or because of their contrariety to infinite good- 
ness and truth, and not with a base view to tighten my hold 
upon God's personal approbation. I grossly pervert the spirit 
of the law, and betray its infinite majesty to shame, if I sup- 
pose it capable of ratifying in any degree my private and per- 
sonal cupidity towards God, or lending even a moment's sanction 
to the altogether frivolous and odious separation which I de- 
voutly hope to compass between myself and other men in his 
sight. The spirit of the law is love, love infinite and eternal ; 
and it consequently laughs my personal homage to scorn, how- 
ever conventionally faultless it may be, so long as it is moved 
by so selfish a temper on my part, or freely imputes to him 
"who is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity" the meanest of 
human characteristics, namely, " a respect of persons." 

It must be abundantly clear by this time, I think, that con- 
science is the distinctive badge of human nature, having no 
manner of respect to any man's personal virtue, but aiming, on 
the contrary, to inflame and nourish in every bosom the human 
sentiment exclusively, the sentiment of every man's invincible 



164 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

solidarity with his kind, which is indeed fatal to all personal pre- 
tension, whether virtuous or vicious. That is to say, conscience 
is what specifically disengages man from all other existence, in 
spite of any generic complicity with such existence on his part ; 
and it is what, therefore, generically confounds every man with 
every other man, whatever specific diversity may exist between 
them. It is, on the one hand, the true logical differentia, or point 
of individuation, between man and animal ; and consequently it 
is, on the other hand, the true point of indifference, indistinction, 
or identification, between man and man. In short, conscience 
characterizes the homo or generic interest in humanity, primarily, 
and pays only an incidental regard to the vir or specific interest ; 
its aspect towards the former being altogether positive and salu- 
tary, towards the latter invariably negative and disastrous. 

Now what is the meaning of this great fact ? Why — to all its 
sincere or qualified experts — does conscience practically turn 
out tin's inveterate savor of death unto death, rather than of 
life unto life ? In other words, why does this internecine con- 
flict obtain between our moral interests on the one hand, or 
the life we apparently possess in ourselves, and our spiritual 
interests on the other, or the life we really have in God ? 

The reason, after what has gone before, seems hardly to need 
restatement, being found exclusively in the social bearings of 
conscience, or the influence it exerts upon human brotherhood, 
fellowship, or equality. 

The entire historic function of conscience has been to operate 
an effectual check upon our gigantic natural pride and cupidity 
in spiritual things, by avouching a total contrariety between 
God and ourselves, so long as we remain indifferent to the truth 
of our essential society, fellowship, or equality with our kind, 
and are moved only by selfish or personal considerations in the 
devout overtures we make to the divine regard. In other 
words, conscience is addressed exclusively to the purgation of 
human nature itself, and its consequent thorough reconciliation 
with the divine nature ; and it pays accordingly no manner of 
obeisance to the imbecile claims which any particular subject of 
that nature may prefer to its respect. The only respect it ever 
pays to the private votary is to convince him of sin, through a 
previous conviction of God's wholly impersonal justice or right- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 165 

eousness, and so divorce him from the further cultivation of a 
mercenary piety, while leading him to make common cause with 
his kind, or frankly disavow every title to the divine esteem 
which is-not quite equally shared by publican and harlot. We 
are naturally under a fatal delusion with respect both to God 
and ourselves. That is to say, our sense of selfhood is so abso- 
lute and expansive as to drown our judgment of spiritual truth, 
or lead us to infer that our being is not only apparently but 
really our own, whereas in truth it is exclusively God's being 
in our nature. Thus my senses affirm my absoluteness, and 
hence leave me not only wholly unconscious but even wholly 
unsuspicious of the divine being and existence ; so that I am 
actually shut up for any knowledge I may claim on that subject 
to an immemorial tradition zealously cherished by my race. 
Sense has of course no cavil to allege against a tradition so uni- 
versally respected — the tradition of a physical and moral cre- 
ation of God which took place " once upon a time," an indefi- 
nite number of ages ago. On the contrary it stoutly assumes 
the truth of that superstition, and in doing so binds the mind 
to infer that what took place only " once," or in the beginning 
of history, takes place no longer, but that men, having been 
supernaturally created at the start, have been ever since and at 
most only naturally begotten and born : so that God no longer 
stands in an inward or spiritual and creative relation to men, as 
vivifying their very nature, but only in an outward or legal and 
personal relation as determined by the relative merits and de- 
merits of their petty selves. 

Now conscience or religion is the divinely appointed men- 
struum of our purgation from this sensuous mental captivity, 
and our consequent eventual edification in all right knowledge 
of the relation between man and God. It is the cherubic sword 
which flames every way to guard the mystic " tree of life " ; or 
flashes dismay into every bosom thus persistently mistaught of 
sense, and fills it with the pungent odor of mortality. Religion, 
as I have argued on a previous occasion,* exerts, rightly under- 
stood, no repressive, but a purely liberative or detergent influ- 
ence upon the mind, its office being not to bind but to unbind 

* Substance and Shadow, or Morality and Religion in their Relation to Life. Sec- 
ond Edition. Ticknor and Fields, Boston. 1867. 



166 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

(re-ligare) a victim already fast bound in the fetters of sense. 
My sensuous reasonings all lead me to suppose that there is 
some infallible ratio between God and myself — some middle- 
term or law in which we may freely coincide or become one — 
and that if I can only divine this ratio and faithfully execute its 
behests, I shall be sure to make myself a partaker of the divine 
life. Now religion or conscience apparently flatters this falla- 
cious prepossession on my part, but only that it may the more 
effectually emancipate me from it, by convincing me in the end 
that no such ratio or law is possible between man and God. 
That is to say, it first conciliates my native instincts to the ex- 
tent of giving me a quasi or so-called divine law, contained in 
fleshly ordinances, and suspending my life upon its obedience ; 
but I no sooner engage, as I conceive, in its hearty service than 
I find a new world — a hitherto unsuspected social or spiritual 
realm of life — opening up within me, in the light of which all 
my nascent laurels turn pale and die. I find in fact, the more 
honestly I endeavor to obey the divine law, that a totally prior 
law to this claims my allegiance — the law I am under to my 
own race or nature — and that, until I am perfectly absolved 
from this prior and profounder law it will be idle and hopeless 
to attempt fulfilling the other. The mother stands in a much 
more intimate and tender relation to the child than its father 
does, and easily attracts a love and reverence from it which the 
latter is totally impotent to command. Just so mother Nature 
exerts a far more potent sway over my affections than father 
God ; and the best service accordingly which this quasi divine 
law does me, is to convince me of this necessary but hitherto 
unsuspected truth, and so prepare me betimes for a plenary 
divine descent to my nature, which shall enlarge that nature to 
truly infinite dimensions, and consequently fill me its subject 
with a filial feeling towards God — or a spontaneous love and 
worship — which will forever do away with the thought of any 
paltry legal and personal relations between us. 

Thus it has always been the historic function of conscience to 
undermine the sensuous and merely traditional conceptions we 
entertain in regard to our God-ward origin and destiny, by 
gradually convincing us that neither the physical nor the moral 
man, neither Adam nor Eve, neither the homo nor the vir, has 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 167 

ever had any just claim to be considered God's true or spiritual 
creation: but only that regenerate social and aesthetic man in 
whom Adam and Eve, the homo and the vir, the physical and 
the moral man, are freed from their intrinsic oppugnancy — 
from their reciprocal limitations — and reproduced in perfect 
unity, and in whom alone consequently the divine and the hu- 
man natures are completely reconciled. Conscience is a really 
divine presence in our nature — being in fact its sovereign 
though latent distinction from all lower natures — so that no 
mere vir can ever fulfil its righteous exactions save by spirit- 
ually exalting himself to infinitude : which means, enlarging 
himself to the proportions of the homo, or universalizing his 
distinctively personal sympathies and aspirations to all the ex- 
tent of man's common or generic want towards God. In other 
words, no one who seek* to appropriate this divine life in our 
nature, or make it his own by reproducing its righteousness, 
oan ever hope to succeed save in so far as he exhibits in him- 
self a virtue every way identical with the broadest humanity, 
and therefore commensurate with the divine perfection : save 
by proving himself so frankly and spontaneously dead to every 
personal hope and aspiration, every craving after mere moral 
excellence, in short every inspiration of his native egotism and 
vanity, as to feel absolutely no conflict whatever between his 
private interests and those of universal man. Conscience an- 
nounces a fundamental discrepancy between our private and our 
public life, i. e. a deficient social force in our nature ; and as the 
sole end or sanction of discord is harmony, so accordingly no 
one can pretend to harmonize these contrasted spheres, who is 
lacking above all things on the private side, or in whom the sen- 
timent of self antagonizes that of kind. If conscience be the 
veritable door of immortal life, and if it avouch at the same 
time a fundamental practical antagonism between the universal 
and the individual interest in our nature, then clearly it 
must prove an open door only to those in whom this antagonism 
has been actually confronted and reconciled, and a closed door 
to every one else. 

Scarcely any doubt need linger now, I apprehend, upon the 
philosophic import of conscience. It is the badge of human 
nature itself, considered as being inwardly qualified or quickened 



168 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 

by God's infinitude, and at the same time outwardly quantified 
or substantiated by any amount of finite limitation, any amount 
of mineral, vegetable, and animal matter. It is nothing short 
of ludicrous, accordingly, to imagine any man capable, of fulfil- 
ling conscience, or the creative law of human nature, whose per- 
sonality does not exhibit a perfect reconciliation of its opposing 
factors, infinite and finite, God and man, a perfect harmony or 
adjustment of its twin poles, high and low, good and evil. 
Whoso fulfils the law of conscience must infallibly present in his 
proper person that rigorous and exact equation of the creative 
and created natures which all its righteousness implies; and he 
can only do this by, first of all, renouncing his personal con 
sciousness — that is to say, whatsoever specific virtue or pride of 
character may conventionally approximate him more closely to 
God than other men, and frankly identifying himself in sympa- 
thy and aspiration only with man's generic or universal want, 
the want in which all men are one, want of society, fellowship, 
equality, brotherhood. The law is meant to be fulfilled of 
course, since otherwise human nature, or the human race, would 
confess itself a failure ; but, in the nature of things, it can only 
be fulfilled by a man who, being in thorough sympathy, on the 
one hand, with God's infinite majesty, is no less sympathetic on 
the other with man's most sordid misery ; or who, being on one 
hand in perfect accord with God's stainless love or mercy, is on 
that very account emphatically able to justify man's most abject 
natural selfishness and worldliness. Such a man of course will 
be qualified to fulfil the law of conscience, but he will do so only 
by inwardly disowning all that exceptional virtue which legally 
distinguishes one man or one family of men from the com- 
munion of their kind, and publicly identifying himself with what- 
soever normal vice and unrighteousness bind them to it. 

Remember that conscience, or the spiritual creation, is a unit. 
That is to say, the two factors given in science or the material 
creation as divided — God and man, infinite and finite, spirit and 
flesh, the one all fulness the other all want — are exhibited in 
conscience, or the spiritual creation, as perfectly reconciled, mar- 
ried, put at one ; while in the material creation the higher fac- 
tor or creative element is held in invincible subjection, being 
bound hand and foot to the necessities of the lower or created 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 169 

element. The palpable logic of creation — considered as an 
exact equation between the creative fulness and the created 
want — is that the former be utterly swallowed up of the latter, 
or actually disappear within its boundless stomach. In other 
words, in order to the creature coming to self-consciousness, or 
getting projection from the creator, it is necessary that the latter 
actually pass over to the created nature, cheerfully assume and 
eternally bear the lineaments of its abysmal destitution : so that 
practically, or in its initiament, creation takes on a wholly illu- 
sory aspect, the creature alone appearing, and the creator con- 
sequently reduced to actual non-existence, or claiming at most a 
traditional recognition. Now conscience — regarded as the law 
of the spiritual creation, or of the evolution of the human mind 
— corrects this fallacy of the sensuous understanding in us, by 
convincing us that this is only the true and inalienable life of the 
creative love — only its sublime necessity, so to speak — to dis- 
appear within the precincts of the created consciousness, or freely 
abandon itself to every caprice and exaction of our finite nature, 
since otherwise the creature himself could never come to con- 
sciousness, nor present consequently any natural basis for his 
subsequent spiritual evolution in all divine perfection : so that 
what we call nature, and suppose to be absolutely set off from 
the creative personality, is in truth or at bottom only the crea- 
tor swamped or submerged in the created consciousness, in order 
thence alone to effect and energize the spiritual creation. Of 
course if the creator should really exist apart from or out of re- 
lation to the created nature — if, in other words, his resources 
should not be visibly and wholly absorbed in the created con- 
sciousness — then it would be impossible to conceive of the crea- 
ture ever coming to self-consciousness ; for he is only by virtue 
of the creator, and he can never therefore phenomenally exist or 
appear to himself, but by the creator's perpetual tacit connivance 
and assistance. And if this be the inflexible logic of creation, 
it is perfectly obvious that no professing subject of conscience 
can legitimately pretend to reproduce its righteousness, save by 
perfectly reconciling in himself these phenomenally divided na- 
tures, or crowning man's lowest conventional infamy with God's 
spotless sanctity. 



170 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

XXIV. 

It would be difficult to express the exquisite peace which 
flowed into my intellect, when this great discovery began to 
shape itself out of the multitudinous but accordant details of 
Svvedenborg's marvellous yet most veracious audita et visa. If 
there had been anything habitually unquestioned to my convic- 
tion, it was the indefeasible sovereignty of conscience on the one 
hand, or the literal finality of its judgments in all the field of a 
man's relations to God, and the truth on the other hand of every 
man's complete personal adequacy to all the demands of its 
righteousness, provided he were only actuated by good-will ; and 
I spared no pains accordingly to cultivate such good-will, and so 
conciliate its austere regard. I never questioned the absolute- 
ness of all the data, good and evil, of my moral experience. I 
never doubted the infinite and eternal consequences which 
seemed to me to be wrapped up in my consciousness of person- 
ality, or the sentiment I habitually cherished of my individual 
relations and responsibility to God. I had never, to my own 
suspicion, been arrayed in any overt hostility to the divine name. 
On the contrary, I reckoned myself an unaffected friend of God, 
inasmuch as I was a most eager and conscientious aspirant after 
moral perfection. And yet the total unconscious current of my 
religious life was so egotistic, the habitual color of my piety was 
so bronzed by an inmost selfishness and indifference to all man- 
kind, save in so far as my action towards them bore upon my 
own salvation, that I never reflected myself to myself, never was 
able to look back upon any chance furrow my personality had 
left upon the sea of time, without a shuddering conviction of the 
abysses of spiritual profligacy over which I perpetually hovered, 
and towards which I incessantly gravitated. And I have accord- 
ingly no hesitation in expressing my firm persuasion that noth- 
ing kept me in this state of things from lapsing into a complete 
despair, and a consequent actual loathing and hatred of the 
divine name, but the infinite majesty of Christ ; that is to say, 
a most real and vital divine presence in my nature deeper than 
my self, deeper than consciousness, deeper than any and every 
fact of my moral or personal experience, which was able, there- 
fore, to rebuke and control even the pitiless rancor of conscience 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 171 

itself, and say with authority to its tumultuous waves, Peace, be 
still ! 

I do not mean to say that I had any clear idea of this truth at 
the time. Familiar as my intellect had always been with the 
letter of revelation, it was — not indeed altogether, but — com- 
paratively blind to its spiritual scope, until I found in Sweden- 
borg all the light it was possible to crave in that direction. My 
traditional faith bound me to look upon Christ as a mere suc- 
cedaneum to Moses, or practically subordinated the gospel in my 
estimation to the law ; so that the only use I ever made of the 
christian facts — whenever the voice of conscience was loud in 
my bosom, proclaiming the inextinguishable difference of good 
and evil, or God and man — was to worry out of them some 
more or less plausible pretext of consolation against the wrath 
of God, still presumably impending upon all manner of unright- 
eousness. I do not think I overstate my intellectual obligations 
to Swedenborg, when I say that his spiritual disclosures put an 
effectual end to this insane worry and superstition on my part 
forever. For these disclosures made plain to my understanding, 
what the Scriptures themselves had long before made plain to 
my heart, namely, that the law, with whatever pomp it had been 
sometimes administered, boasted of no independent worth, that 
its total sanctity lay in its negatively adumbrating to sense a 
coming righteousness in our nature so truly divine or infinite as 
to forbid all positive anticipation of it without instant wreck to 
the mind's freedom. Swedenborg showed me, in fact, in the 
discovery he for the first time makes to the intellect of spiritual 
laws, the laws of the divine creation, that the conception of law 
or conscience as a basis of intercourse between God and the soul 
is no longer tenable in philosophy, but must give place at once 
to the truth of a present or actual divine life in the very heart 
of human nature. He shows the empire of law, of conscience, 
of religion in human affairs, to be superseded henceforth by the 
christian truth, the truth of God's natural humanity, and he 
allows the soul no permanent refuge against spiritual illusion and 
insanity but what it finds in that supreme verity. What ren- 
ders this lapsed regime of law or conscience or religion spiritu- 
ally odious and intolerable to me, is that it proves a sheer and 
invariable ministration of death to all my personal hopes God- 



172 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOBG. 



ward; it proves this, and cannot help proving it, because its 
ends are primarily public or universal, and mine are primarily 
private or individual. What I crave with the whole bent of my 
nature is that God should be propitious to me personally, what- 
ever he may be to all the rest of mankind. I have naturally a 
supreme regard to myself, although I habitually conceal that 
fact both from my own sight and that of other people under a 
flowing drapery of professional benevolence ; and what con- 
science or the law — regarded as a literal divine administration 
— does, is to inflame my cupidity towards God to such a pitch, 
as that the thick scales fall at last from my eyes, and I am ready 
not only to perceive what an unclean and beggarly lout I have 
always spiritually been in his sight, but also to agree that it were 
better there were no God at all, than that he should be capable 
of lending a benignant ear to my hypocritical or dramatic wor- 
ship. 

Understand me here, I beg. I have not the least idea of rep- 
resenting myself as ever having been especially obnoxious to the 
rebuke of conscience. On the contrary, I am willing to admit 
that I have been tolerably blameless in all the literal righteous- 
ness of the law. It is probable, no doubt, that I have borne 
actual false-witness on occasion, or committed here and there 
actual theft, adultery, and murder. I am not in the least inter- 
ested either to admit or deny any literal imputations of this sort. 
But the habitual tenor of my life has been undeniably contrary 
to these practices ; and it is only in my spiritual aspect accord- 
ingly that I find myself a reprobate. For example, I have been 
living all my days in great comfort and plenty, when the great 
mass of my fellow-men are sunken in poverty, and all the ills 
physical and moral which poverty is sure to breed. From the 
day of my birth till now I have not only never known whatat 
was to have had an honest want, a want of my nature, ungrati- 
fied, but I have also been able to squander upon my mere fan- 
tastic want, the will of my personal caprice, an amount of sus- 
tenance equal to the maintenance of a virtuous household. And 
yet thousands of persons directly about me, in all respects my 
equals, in many respects my superiors, have never in all their 
lives enjoyed an honest meal, an honest sleep, an honest suit of 
clothes, save at the expense of their own personal toil, or that 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 173 

of some parent or child, and have never once been able to give 
the reins to their personal caprice without an ignominious ex- 
posure to severe social penalties. It is, to be sure, perfectly 
just that I should be conveniently fed and lodged and clad, and 
that I should be educated out of my native ignorance and imbe- 
cility, because these enjoyments on my part imply no straitening 
of any other man's social resources, and are indeed a necessary 
condition of my own social worth. But it is a monstrous affront 
to the divine justice or righteousness, that I should be guaran- 
teed, by what calls itself society, a life-long career of luxury 
and self-indulgence, while so many other men and women every 
way my equals, in many ways my superiors, go all their days 
miserably fed, miserably lodged, miserably clothed, and die at 
last in the same ignorance and imbecility, though not, alas ! in 
the same innocence, that cradled their infancy. It is our wont, 
doubtless, to submit more or less cheerfully to this unholy social 
muddle or chaos, and many of us indeed are to be found rejoicing 
in it as the fit opportunity of their own lawless aggrandize- 
ment, material and moral. But be assured that no one, be he 
preacher or philosopher, statesman or churchman, poet or phi- 
lanthropist, artist or man of science, can reconcile himself in 
heart to it, can reflectively justify it on grounds either of reason 
or necessity, either of principle or expediency, without ipso 
facto turning out an unconscious but most real abettor of spirit- 
ual wickedness in high places, and reaping a spiritual damnation 
so deep that he will himself be the very last to feel or suspect 
its reality. 

Now I had long felt this deep spiritual damnation in myself 
growing out of an outraged and insulted divine justice, had 
long been pent up in spirit to these earthquake mutterings and 
menaces of a violated conscience, without seeing any clear door 
of escape open to me. That is to say, I perceived with endless 
perspicacity that if it were not for the hand of God's provi- 
dence visiting with constant humiliation and blight every secret 
aspiration of my pride and vanity, I should be more than any 
other man reconciled to the existing most atrocious state of 
things. I knew no outward want, I had the amplest social rec- 
ognition, I enjoyed the converse and friendship of distinguished 
men, I floated in fact on a sea of unrighteous plenty, and I was 



174 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

all the while so indifferent if not inimical in heart to the divine 
justice, that save for the spiritual terrors it ever and anon sup- 
plied to my lethargic sympathies, to my swinish ambition, I 
should have dragged out all my days in that complacent sty, nor 
have ever so much as dreamed that the outward want of my fel- 
lows — their want with respect to nature and society — was in 
truth but the visible sign and fruit of my own truer want, my 
own more inward destitution with respect to God. Thus my 
religious conscience was one of poignant misgiving towards God, 
if not of complete practical separation, and it filled my intellect 
with all manner of perplexed speculation and gloomy forebod- 
ing. Do what I might I never could attain to the least religious 
self-complacency, or push my devout instincts to the point of ac- 
tual fanaticism. Do what I would I could never succeed in per- 
suading myself that God almighty cared a jot for me in my 
personal capacity, i. e. as I stood morally individualized from, or 
consciously antagonized with, my kind ; and yet this was the 
identical spiritual obligation imposed upon me by the church. 
Time and again I consulted my spiritual advisers to know how it 
might do for me to abandon myself to the simple joy of the 
truth as it was in Christ, without taking any thought for the 
church, or the interests of my religious character. And they 
always told me that it would not do at all ; that my church sym- 
pathies, or the demands of my religious character, were every- 
thing comparatively, and my mere belief in Christ comparatively 
nothing, since devils believed just as much as I did. The re- 
tort was as apt as it was obvious, that the devils believed and 
trembled, while I believed and rejoiced ; and that this joy on my 
part could not be helped, but only hindered, whenever it was 
allowed to be complicated with any question about myself. But 
no : the evidently foregone conclusion to be forced upon me in 
every case was, that a man's religious standing, or the love he 
bears the church, takes the place, under the gospel, of his moral 
standing, or the love he bore the state, under the law ; hence 
that no amount of delight in the truth, for the truth's sake 
alone, could avail me spiritually, unless it were associated with 
a scrupulous regard for a sanctified public opinion. 

Imagine, then, my glad surprise, my cordial relief, when in 
this state of robust religious nakedness, with no wretchedest fig- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 175 

leaf of ecclesiastical finery to cover me from the divine inclem- 
ency, I caught my first glimpse of the spiritual contents of rev- 
elation, or discerned the profoundly philosophic scope of the 
christian truth. This truth at once emboldened me to obey my 
own regenerate intellectual instincts without further parley, in 
throwing the church overboard, or demitting all care of my re- 
ligious character to the devil, of whom alone such care is an in- 
spiration. The christian truth indeed — which is the truth of 
God's incarnation in our nature, and hence of the ineffable 
divine sanctity of our natural bodies, not only in all the compass 
of their appetites and passions, but down even to their literal 
flesh and bones — teaches me to look upon the church's hearti- 
est malison as God's heartiest benison, inasmuch as whatsoever 
is most highly esteemed among men — namely, that private or 
personal righteousness in man, of which the church is the spe- 
cial protagonist and voucher — is abomination to God. The 
church maintains a jealous profession of the divinity of Christ, 
and fills the earth with the most artfully reiterate and melodious 
invocation of his name ; but when it comes practically to inter- 
pret this divinity, and apply it to men's living needs, the result 
turns out a contemptible quackery, inasmuch as this alleged 
union of the divine and human natures endows us helpless par- 
takers of the latter nature with no privilege towards God, but 
leaves us, unless we are consecrated by some absurd ecclesiasti- 
cal usage, as far off from the sheltering divine arms, as any 
worshipper of Jupiter or the Syrian Astarte. Revelation, on the 
contrary, teaches me that Christ's divinity is an utterly insane 
pretension, in so far as it implies any personal antagonism on his 
part with the rest of mankind, or claims to have been exerted 
on his own proper behalf, and not on behalf exclusively of uni- 
versal man, good and evil, wise and simple, clean and unclean. 
In other words, spiritual Christianity means the complete secu- 
larization of the divine name, or its identification henceforth only 
with man's common or natural want, that want in which all men 
are absolutely one, and its consequent utter estrangement from 
the sphere of his private or personal fulness, in which every 
man is consciously divided from his neighbor: so that I may 
never aspire to the divine favor, and scarcely to the divine toler- 
ance, save in my social or redeemed natural aspect ; i. e. as I 



176 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOBG. 

stand morally identified with the vast community of men of 
whatever race or religion, cultivating no consciousness of antag- 
onist interests to any other man, but on the contrary frankly 
disowning every personal hope towards God which does not flow 
exclusively from his redemption of human nature, or is not 
based purely and simply upon his indiscriminate love to the 
race. 

Such, as I have been able to apprehend it, is the intellectual 
secret of Swedenborg ; such the calm, translucent depths of 
meaning that underlie the tormented surface of explication he 
puts upon the spiritual sense of scripture. In spite of my rev- 
erence for the christian letter, perhaps to a great extent be- 
cause of it, I had never enjoyed the least rational insight into 
the principles of the world's spiritual administration, until I 
encountered this naive, uncouth, and unexampled literature, and 
caught therein, as I say, my first clear glimpse of the vast intel- 
lectual wealth stored up in its new philosophy of nature, or its 
doctrine of the divine natural humanity. The obvious disquali- 
fication of my intellect, no doubt, spiritually viewed, lay in my 
habitually identitying nature, to my own thought, with the cre- 
ated rather than the creative personality. That is to say, inas- 
much as the creature to my sensuous imagination appeared to 
exist absolutely or in himself, and not exclusively in and by the 
creator, I could not logically help making him responsible for his 
nature, or whatsoever is legitimately involved in himself. By the 
nature of a thing we mean whatsoever the thing is in itself, and 
apart from foreign interference ; and so long consequently as we 
ascribe real and not mere phenomenal personality or character 
to the creature, we cannot possibly help saddling him with the 
responsibility of his own nature. The only way to evade this 
necessity is to deny him all real, and allow him a purely phenom- 
enal, existence, by making his actual life or being to inhere, not in 
himself, but exclusively in his creator. But who, before Sweden- 
borg, ever dreamt of such a thing? The moral pretension in 
existence has always been regarded outside of the church as alto- 
gether absolute and unquestionable ; and inside the church no 
machinery exists for its confutation or exhaustion, but the two 
initiatory rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, upon which 
alone the church was founded : the one rite inferring its sub- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 177 

jec't's complete purgation from any amount of moral defilement 
his conscience may have contracted, the other his consequent 
free impletion with any amount of spiritual divine good. 

No more than any one else, however, had I compassed the 
least spiritual apprehension of the church, or divined save in 
the dimmest manner the endless philosophic substance wrapped 
up in its two constitutive ordinances. Thus, although I ren- 
dered faultless ceremonial homage in my soul to the supreme 
lordship of Christ (as traditional God-man, or God in our na- 
ture), I yet all the while had no distinct conception that the 
divinity thus ascribed to him implied any really creative or com- 
prehensive relation on his part to our immortal destiny. In fact 
I utterly ignored his pretension to constitute an utterly new and 
final — because spiritual — divine advent upon earth, nor ever 
for a moment therefore supposed it to be pregnant with hostility 
and disaster to all that our natural understanding has been wont 
to conceive of under the name of God, and our natural heart 
has been wont dramatically to worship under that specious and 
grandiose appellation. Along with the entire christian world, 
on the contrary, I always conceived of Christ's divinity as a.n 
eminently personal and restrictive one, based upon his conceded 
moral superiority to all mankind, whereas in truth it is a purely 
spiritual or impersonal one, based upon his actual and undis- 
guised moral inferiority to the lowest rubbish of human kind 
that faithfully dogged his footsteps, and hung enchanted upon 
his lips. 

The world has had gods many and lords many, but they are 
one and all eternally superseded and set at naught by the chris- 
tian revelation of the divine name as being essentially inimical 
and repugnant to the moral hypothesis of creation, or the exist- 
ence of any personal relations between the soul and God. It is 
true that the christian church has never been just to the idea 
of its founder, has been indeed anything but just to the alto- 
gether spiritual doctrine of the divine name he confided to it. 
From the day of the apostle John's decease down to that of 
our modern transcendentalism, a midnight darkness has rested 
upon the human mind in regard to spiritual things — a darkness 
so palpable at last, so utterly unrelieved by any feeblest star- 
shine of faith or knowledge, that a church has recently set itself 



178 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

up among us which claims to be nothing if not spiritual, and yet, 
forsooth, excludes Christ from a primacy in its regard, because 
it can get no conclusive proof of his having been morally or per- 
sonally superior to certain other great men, of whom history 
preserves a memorial ! This indeed has been the animus of the 
church throughout history, to naturalize rather than spiritualize, 
— to moralize rather than humanize, — the creative name, by 
identifying it with certain personal interests in humanity rather 
than those of universal man; by showing it instinct in short with 
a sectarian or selfish rather than a social or loving temper. It 
could not possibly have done otherwise in fact, without violating 
its function as a literal or a ritual economy, which has always 
been to represent or embody in itself the instincts of the purely 
natural mind, of the strictly unregenerate heart, towards God. 

The church has thus spiritually or unconsciously crucified the 
divine name, while intending literally or consciously to hallow it. 
For no man by nature has any other idea of God than that of an al- 
mighty and irresponsible being creating all things — not out of his 
own infinite love and wisdom yearning to communicate their own 
potencies and felicities to whatsoever is simply not themselves — 
but out of stark and veritable naught, and merely to subserve his 
own personal pleasure, his own selfish and vainglorious renown. 
The conception we naturally cherish of God in his creative aspect 
is that of an unprincipled but omnipotent conjuror or magician, 
who is able to create things — i. e. to make them be absolutely 
or in themselves, and irrespectively of other things — by simply 
willing them to be ; and to unmake them therefore, if they do 
not happen to suit his whim, just as jauntily as he has made them. 
Now there is no such unprincipled and almighty power as this, 
nor any semblance of such a power, on the hither side of hell. 
And the church, accordingly, by massing or embodying in its own 
distinctive formulas this superstition of the carnal heart, and 
affording it a quasi divine authentication, only succeeds in fur- 
nishing the creative spirit in our nature the very imprisonment 
or appropriation it needs — the identical crucifixion or assimilation 
it demands — in order finally to transfuse our natural veins with 
the blood of its own resurgent and incorruptible life. But in 
spite of all this — in spite of the church's owning only a negative 
worth, only a representative sanctity — we cannot too gratefully 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 179 

appreciate its proper historic use, which has been to induct the 
common mind into a gladsome recognition of God's natural 
humanity, by gradually disgusting or fatiguing it with the con- 
ception of an abstract — i. e. an idle, unemployed, or unrelated 
— divine force in the world. 

Deism, as a philosophic doctrine, enjoys only a starveling exist- 
ence. To be sure, nothing is more congruous with the unculti- 
vated instincts of the heart, than the conception of a self-involved 
or self-contained deity, — a deity who is essentially sufficient unto 
himself, and who is therefore a standing discredit, reproach, and 
menace to whatsoever is not himself. For we who are by na- 
ture finite and relative can contrive no other way of honoring 
God than by making him intensely opposite to ourselves, or 
projecting him in imagination as far as possible from our personal 
limitations, from our own finite experience. We do not hesi- 
tate to attribute simple or absolute — which is sheerly idiotic — 
existence to him, an existence-in-himself, or before the world was, 
and utterly irrelative to his creature ; we endow him with all 
manner of passive personal perfection, such as infinitude of space 
and eternity of time ; and by way of conclusively establishing his 
subjection to nature, while at the same time avouching his per- 
sonal superiority to ourselves, we call him omniscient, omnipres- 
ent, and omnipotent, or suppose him literally cognizant of every 
event in time, literally present in every inch of space, and literal- 
ly doing whatsoever he pleases, while we do only what we can. 
No doubt this proceeding is none the less useful for being inevi- 
table on our part. No doubt we thus adequately objectify 
the divine being to our regard, or get him into conditions at 
once of such generic nearness to us, and at the same time of such 
specific remoteness, as to constitute a very fair basis of evolution 
to any subsequent spiritual intercourse which may take place 
between us. But this is the sole justification we can allege of 
the devout natural habit in question. For God has really no 
absolute but only a relative perfection, no passive but a purely 
active infinitude. His perfection is no way literal, but a strictly 
spiritual or creative one, being entirely inseparable save in 
thought from the work of his hands ; his infinitude a wholly act- 
ual or living one, standing in his free communication, or sponta- 
neous abandonment, of himself to whatsoever is not himself. He 



180 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

has in truth no absolute or personal and passive worth, such as 
we ourselves covet under the name of virtue ; no claim upon our 
regard but a working claim ; a claim founded not upon what he 
is in himself, but upon what he is relatively to others. Our na- 
tive ignorance of divine things to be sure is so dense, that we 
cannot help according him a blind and superstitious worship for 
what he presumably is before creation, or in-himself and out of 
relation to all other existence. But this nevertheless is sheer 
stupidity on our part. His sole real claim to the heart's alle- 
giance lies in the excellency of his creative and redemptive 
name. That is to say, it consists, first, in his so freely subject- 
ing himself to us in all the compass of our creaturely destitution 
and impotence, as to endow us with physical and moral con- 
sciousness, or permit us to feel ourselves absolutely to be ; and 
then, secondly, in his becoming by virtue of such subjection so 
apparently and exclusively objective to us — so much the sole or 
controlling aim of our spiritual destiny — as to be able to mould 
our finite or subjective consciousness at his pleasure, inflaming 
it finally to such a pitch of sensible alienation from — or felt other- 
ness to— both him and our kind, as to make us inwardly loathe 
ourselves, and give ourselves no rest until we put on the linea- 
ments of an infinite or perfect man, in attaining to the proportions 
of a regenerate society, fellowship, brotherhood of all mankind. 



XXV. 

The very great obscurity which attaches to the problem of crea- 
tion is not, I am persuaded, intrinsic, but altogether extrinsic, 
arising from our instinctive and inveterate proneness "to put 
the cart before the horse " in spiritual things, by making what 
is first in creative order, namely, the object, last, and what is 
last, namely, the subject, first. The fundamental logic of crea- 
tion is, that it is real only in so far as it is actual, and not contrari- 
wise ; thus that its form determines its substance, or its objective 
element its subjective one. In other words, the law of all spirit- 
ual existence is that doing determines being, or that character is 
based upon action, not action upon character. Whatsoever one 
actually does when one is free from the coercion of necessity or 
the constraint of prudence is the measure of what he really is. 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 181 

Thus his action when freely exerted determines his being or 
character, and is itself wholly undetermined by it. 

But we are inveterately prone in our instinctual judgments 
to reverse this law. We habitually conceive that the subjective 
element in existence or action qualifies the objective one ; thus 
that a man's being qualifies his doing, his character his action ; 
so that, applying this fallacious mental habitude to divine things, 
we readily conclude that it is the creator who limits or qualifies 
the creature, and not exclusively the creature who limits or 
qualifies the creator. 

The truth, however, is exactly contrary to this. The subjec- 
tive element in existence has no other function than to quantify 
it, i. e. give it material substance or filling out ; while its objec- 
tive element alone qualifies it or gives it spiritual form. My 
subjective being merely quantifies me, or gives me natural iden- 
tification with all other men, while my objective action alone 
qualifies me, i. e. gives me spiritual individuality or characteristic 
distinction from other men. But if this rule hold true in ref- 
erence to our ordinary existence and action, it is emphatically 
true in the sphere of creative action, where we see the creator 
contributing only the substantial or quantifying element in the 
result, and the creature himself furnishing its formal or quali- 
fying one. Creation indeed is inconceivable on any less generous 
terms. What sort of a creation would that be, where nothing 
was created? And how shall anything be created — i. e. have 
being communicated to it — unless it first exist in its own form, or 
have selfhood? And what is it "to exist in one's own form," 
or " to have selfhood," but to exist naturally, i. e. to be the joint 
product of a generic or common substance and a specific or 
differential form? The statue has no natural base, thus no 
selfhood or form of its own, to serve for the communication 
to it of its inventor's being. Hence the statue cannot properly 
be said to be created, but only invented, imagined, devised. The 
sculptor does not create it, because he is all unable to communi- 
cate himself to it, to pass over to it, bag and baggage, in the 
shape of the material marble. If the sculptor could do this, — 
if he should himself give maternity as well as paternity to his 
work, give it generic substance as well as specific form, by him- 
self animating the marble out of which the statue is wrought, 



182 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

so that the statue itself might thenceforth be seen to flower out 
of the marble as the grass flowers out of the earth — then indeed 
the sculptor might truly be said to create his work, and the statue 
would feel a brimming life of its own animating its members. 
For this is fundamental to the idea of creation, that the creator 
give natural existence or selfhood to his creature, since otherwise 
the creature will feel no possible ground of spiritual reaction to- 
wards the creator ; and this can be done of course only by the 
creator passing over unreservedly to the created nature, making 
himself over in all the wealth of his power a prisoner to the na- 
ture of his creature, in order that the creature, feeling this infi- 
nite potentiality in his nature incessantly stimulating him to like 
infinite action, may himself in his turn put on truly divine di- 
mensions. Thus the statue, though it might enjoy physical 
consciousness, or the sentiment of its own identity, could never 
attain to moral consciousness, or the sentiment of its own indi- 
viduality, save in so far as the sculptor could afford to immerse 
or lose himself to sight in the maternal marble, in order to un- 
dergo a resuscitated or glorified existence in the personality of 
the statue. If the marble could so completely obscure, i. e. so 
completely absorb or take up into itself, the sculptor's being and 
activity, as to betray no evidence of his presence in it, so that the 
statue should never suspect the truth of the case, nor hesitate 
consequently to look upon its material substance as absolutely 
its own substance, then of course the statue, in formulating this 
judgment to itself, would to its own thought perfectly exclude the 
sculptor from the periphery of its conscious life or the sphere of 
its subjective experience — that is, from any inward and spiritual 
relation to it — and thereby compel him into purely outside or 
formal and objective conditions. 

Undoubtedly this judgment on the statue's part, and conse- 
quent appropriation to itself of its creator's being, would be 
strictly fallacious, when viewed absolutely ; because in very truth 
the sculptor alone furnishes all its subjective being to the statue, 
while the statue in its turn supplies him only with objective ex- 
istence. But yet, evidently, the natural existence of the statue, 
or its living creation, would be conditioned upon this same fallacy, 
since without it the statue would be forever void of selfhood, 
void of subjective life or consciousness, and hence of any real 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 183 

or objective participation in its sculptor's being. But in point 
of fact the statue is not created, disclaims any living basis, be- 
cause it lacks that generic or identical substance, that common 
quantity, which we call nature (but which in reality is God-in- 
us, God-man, the lord), and which is essential to all living exist- 
ence ; and possesses only the specific or individual form, only 
the differential quality, it derives from man. Hence it is an in- 
animate or artificial existence, in ghastly contrast with all that 
lives or grows. 

Such then is the indispensable condition of the creator's ever 
becoming objective, i. e. cognizable to his creature, that he be 
utterly swamped so to speak in the created nature, utterly lost 
to sight in the creature's subjective consciousness, and know no 
resurrection from that death but in a new and spiritual or objec- 
tive creation. Creation means, first of all, giving the creature 
subjective consciousness, which is felt freedom or selfhood ; it 
means the endowing of the creature with its own conscious life, its 
own natural form ; and in order to this the creator must himself 
be its unrecognized generic substance, must himself constitute 
the sole, patient, unflinching, invisible reality imprisoned in its 
visible natural form or phenomenality ; because otherwise the 
creature would be without selfhood or conscious life, and hence 
without any faculty of spiritual insight, or sympathetic conjunc- 
tion with its maker. This natural form or appearance of the 
creature will be indelibly his own, but it will be his by no ab- 
solute or unconditional right, but simply because the creator 
himself is its sole underlying spiritual substance or being, eter- 
nally hidden from view, eternally masked from discovery, under 
the gross mental superstition — the dense mental incubus — we 
call the world or nature. 

It takes but a glance to see how repugnant this entire strain 
of doctrine is to established maxims, whether practical or spec- 
ulative. If we cannot help magnifying the subjective element, 
the element of self, in all our moral and aesthetic judgments,* we 
surely cannot help doing so with added emphasis and good-will 
in our judgment of spiritual and divine things. Who of us ever 

* See Appendix, Note G, for some illustrations of the way in which our practi- 
cal judgments are habitually betrayed by the absurd preponderance we give to the 
subjective or phenomenal element in consciousness. 



184 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

doubts that in creation the creator remains essentially aloof from 
the created nature, essentially uncommitted to it, when in truth 
what we call the created nature is itself a mere shadow or re- 
flection of the creative effulgence stamped upon our mental hori- 
zon, in order to give the creature that necessary background or 
relief which he requires for his own self-recognition ? There is 
no such thing as the created nature. It is a mere phantom of the 
creature's ignorance by which, in the absence of any spiritual in- 
sight, he seeks and contrives to account for his own existence. 
My moral part, which individualizes me from all lower existence 
and identifies me only with man, is absolute and suffices unto 
itself, being a pure fact of consciousness. But my physical part, 
which identifies me with all lower existence and individualizes 
me only from man, being a fact of sense, not of consciousness, is 
anything but absolute, and utterly refuses therefore to be ac- 
counted for on any hypothesis short of nature, i. e. short of 
some middle term between God and myself, giving us that need- 
ful subjective distance from each other which is implied in our 
subsequent objective contact or approximation to each other. 
Thus nature regarded as existing absolutely, or apart from the 
mind, is a mere superstition or abject fetch of our ignorance in 
regard to God, whereby we make out to account for creation on 
mechanical — whilst we are still untaught to do so on dynam- 
ical — principles. Being able as we are to distinguish between 
creator and creature in thought, we presume they are also dis- 
tinguishable in fact ; whereas in fact they are so utterly undis- 
tinguishable — so indissolubly blent, so chaotically commingled 
or confused — that we inevitably mistake what is logically the 
creative element (nature) for the created, and what is logically 
the created (man) for the creative. 

In short we never suspect that God is creative only in and by 
the creature, but, on the contrary, hold him to be so absolutely, 
or in and by himself exclusively. That is to say, we invaria- 
bly suppose that the creator is subjectively not objectively con- 
stituted. We have no idea that the husband or father is subjec- 
tively constituted, for we see very plainly that he is objectively 
constituted, being what he is as husband and father, not in virtue 
of himself, but only in virtue of wife and child. Yet we never 
tire of making this glaring mistake in the higher relation, and 



THE SECEET OF SWEDENBOKG. 185 

insist upon making God subjectively creative, instead of objec- 
tively so ; creative in and by himself, instead of in and by the 
creature exclusively ; creative by right of being, and not by right 
exclusively of doing. We suppose him to be somehow essen- 
tially a creator, whereas he is only existentially so ; i. e. he cre- 
ates only in so far as he objectively exists, or goes forth from 
himself, from his own subjectivity, from his barren and bleak 
infinitude, and, takes up his abode in the finite, or what is not 
himself, in what indeed from the nature of the case must logi- 
cally be the exact and total opposite of himself. The strict truth 
of creation — which is that the creature owes himself wholly to 
God, and has no breath of underived being — necessitates that 
he shall not even appear to be, save by the creator's actual or ob- 
jective disappearance within all the field of his subjective con- 
sciousness; save by the creator's becoming objectively merged, 
obscured, drowned out, so to speak, in the created subjectivity. 
The relation between the two is that of substance and form, and 
you can no more rationally discern where one ends and the other 
begins than you can sensibly discriminate what is purely mate- 
rial or substantial in the statue from what is purely spiritual or 
formal. As then the substance of things is exclusively by their 
form, while their form exists only from their substance, so what- 
soever in existence is created (as having inward being given to 
it) logically exists only by what is creative ; while whatsoever 
is creative (as having outward existence given to it) logically 
subsists only by what is created. 

Creator and creature then are strictly correlated existences, 
the latter remorselessly implicating or involving the former, the 
former in his turn assiduously explicating or evolving the latter. 
The creator is in truth the subjective or inferior term of the re- 
lation, and the creature its objective or superior term ; although 
in point of fact or appearance the relationship is reversed, the 
creator being thought to be primary and controlling, while the 
creature is thought secondary and subservient. The truth in- 
curs this humiliation, undergoes this falsification, on our behalf 
exclusively, who, because we have by nature no perception of 
God as a spirit, but only as a person like ourselves, are even bru- 
tally ignorant of the divine power and ways. But it is a sheer 
humiliation nevertheless. For in very truth it is the creator 



186 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 



alone who gives subjective seeming, or phenomenal constitution, 
to us, only that we, appearing to ourselves thereupon absolutely 
to be, may ever after give formal existence or objective reality 
to him. ^ Thus creation is not a something outwardly achieved 
by God in space and time, but a something inwardly wrought 
by him within the compass exclusively of human nature or hu- 
man consciousness ; a something subjectively conceived by his 
love, patiently borne or elaborated by his wisdom, and painfully 
brought forth by his power; just as the child is subjectively con- 
ceived, patiently borne, and painfully brought forth by the 
mother. Creation is no brisk activity on God's part, but only a 
long-patience or suffering. It is no ostentatious self-assertion, 
no dazzling parade of magical, irrational, or irresponsible power; 
it is an endless humiliation or prorogation of himself to all the 
lowest exigencies of the created consciousness. In short, it is no 
finite divine action, as we stupidly dream, giving the creature 
objective or absolute projection from his creator; it is in truth 
and exclusively an infinite divine passion, which, all in giving its 
creature subjective or phenomenal existence, contrives to convert 
this provisional existence of his into objective or real being by 
freely endowing the created nature with all its own pomp of love, 
of wisdom, and of power. 

It is easy to see what an immense revolution Swedenboro- ac- 
complishes in philosophy by thus humanizing nature, or resolv- 
ing it into the mind, into man's subjective consciousness, and so 
vacating its claim to the rational objectivity which we, misled by 
sense, erroneously ascribe to it. What we call nature — the 
generic or universal element in existence — has no right, on 
Swedenborg's principles, to exist in itself or subjectively, but 
only as an implication of the human mind. It is a mere out- 
come or effect in the sphere of sense — a mere lifeless imagery, 
echo, or correspondence — of a spiritual work of God which is 
taking place in the invisible depths of the mind, or the realm ex- 
clusively of the human consciousness. And if therefore we per- 
sist in regarding it as a divine ens or finality, we shall not only 
miss the signal advantage it might, as an image or echo, have 
rendered us, in making us acquainted with an otherwise inscru- 
table original, but our intellectual faculty itself will become 
spiritually bastardized by being put out of all lineal or direct 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 187 

relation to the divine mind. What alone is objective to the 
divine mind is man ; and if therefore we would put our intelli- 
gence in harmony with God's, we must be content to see in 
nature a mere phenomenal outcome or appanage of man, a mere 
shadow or correspondence of the human mind. The natural 
universe, on Swedenborg's principles, does not exist to the divine 
mind, being destitute of all reality outside of consciousness. It 
exists only as an inevitable implication of created thought, its 
use being to give logical substance, background, continuity, 
coherence, identity, to all the specific or individual details 
of the creature's sensible experience. All universals are men- 
tally, not physically, realized. The family, for example, is a 
universe of relationship, mentally constituted, extending between 
persons who have sprung from the loins of a certain pair, asso- 
ciated for procreative ends. The tribe again is a unit of rela- 
tionship, mentally constituted, existing among many families ; 
and the city in like manner unites or gives universal mental 
form to many tribes ; while many cities in their turn go to make 
up the mental unity called the nation, which is the highest uni- 
versality yet realized in human thought. If however the unity 
of the race itself had been practically realized by the mind, it 
would confess itself a strict unit of relationship existing among 
all nations and peoples, and would thus illustrate in its measure 
the truth I am enforcing, namely, that the generic or universal 
element in existence is always and exclusively a necessity of our 
thought, representing or expressing that identity of substance, 
that community of being, which to our intelligence subtends 
all specific or differential forms. It is in all cases a strict logical 
induction, or mental generalization, from a greater or less amount 
of specific experience, and it is utterly destitute of real or abso- 
lute validity. In short nature is a purely mental fact. It con- 
stitutes, itself, indeed the identical mind of the race, what we 
call the common mind of man; and we are each of us mentally 
qualified or endowed — each of us intellectually energized — in 
the degree, not of our merely sensible or isolated and absolute, 
but of our rational or relative and associated, discernment : our 
discernment, not of mere visible existence, but of the invisible 
ratio or relationship which binds all existence in unity. And if 
all this be true, then the reader sees at a glance how mistaken 



188 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 

he has always been in viewing human nature, or the human 
race, as a physical and not a purely mental or metaphysical 
quantity, as a fixed or absolute and not as an exclusively free or 
contingent fact. There is no such thing as human nature, out- 
side of men's consciousness ; no such thing as a race of man 
existing in itself, or independently of our mental experience. 
The phrases in question attest no substantive reality, but only an 
inevitable infirmity, only a gross superstition, of our carnal 
thought, whereby, in our ignorance of God's living or spiritual 
perfection, we are prone to account for existence on purely 
mechanical or pseudo-rational principles. Thus human nature is 
no fixed or absolute, but an altogether free or empirical quantity, 
conditioned at its highest upon such a harmony of interests be- 
tween each and every man, as amounts to an actual incarnation 
of the law of conscience in every individual bosom ; and at its 
lowest consequently, upon such a conflict of interests between 
man and man as degrades human life to a lower level than that 
of the brutes. The human race, human nature, has no preten- 
sion in other words to be livingly or spiritually constituted, 
until the twin elements of our consciousness — self and the 
neighbor, delight and duty, interest and principle — have been 
freed from their inveterate subjective antagonism, and definitively 
reconciled or married in an objective society, fellowship, or 
brotherhood of man with man throughout the earth. Con- 
science, as we have seen, is the sole qualifying, i. e. creative, 
law of human nature, inasmuch as it alone individualizes man 
from the brute, and alone identifies him with himself; and 
what conscience with irresistible sovereignty enforces is the un- 
mitigated society, fellowship, equality of all men with each man, 
and of each man with all men, throughout the illimitable realm 
of God's dominion. 

It is all very true then that the generic or universal existence 
which we ascribe to things is a purely mental, not a physical ex- 
perience on our part. We know only specific or individual 
form, and the generic or universal substance we ascribe to such 
form under the term " nature," is only a prejudice or superstition 
growing out of our ignorance of God's creative perfection, or 
of his spiritual and living presence in all existence. What we 
call nature in fact is only a gigantic shadow cast upon the mind 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 189 

by specific or individual — which is spiritual — form; a shadow 
whose sole substance is the lord, or God-Man : that is, society. 
And we must allow it no intellectual tolerance but as such 
shadow. But now if we are faithful to this obligation, we shall 
at once separate ourselves intellectually from all that is called 
religion, or philosophy, or even science almost, upon the earth. 
All the recognized leaders of human thought cherish this pesti- 
lent superstition in regard to nature's absolute universality ; a 
superstition which keeps our reason at the level of sense in 
spiritual things, or degrades it into an occasional haunt of the 
spiritual world, at most, when it ought to be its orderly and per- 
manent home. The current superstition is twofold, as implying, 
first, that nature (the world or macrocosm) exists universally or 
as a whole, in itself, and without reference to the spiritual world, 
which is supposed in fact, if admitted at all, to be simply second- 
ary and subservient thereto ; and secondly, that as such universe 
or whole it of course involves man (the mind or microcosm). 
Such is the traditional hallucination belonging to our orthodox 
ways of thinking both in science and philosophy. All our intel- 
lectual scribes and rulers agree in this, that nature is a being, and 
not merely a seeming or appearance. So far indeed are they 
from suspecting that she is but the shadow of the human mind 
projected upon the senses whereby the mind comes at last to 
adequate self-consciousness, that they look upon nature as the 
substance, and man himself as the shadow. Swedenborg alone 
disenchants the intellect of this illusion, by denying nature as a 
true universal, and allowing her only a relative universality, a 
universality in relation to our thought, that is, to the innumera- 
ble specific forms our thought embraces. All cognition is of 
necessity specific or formal (that is, spiritual) ; and what we 
postulate as a generic or universal background to such cognition, 
or its subject-matter, is a transparent fetch of our ignorance to 
supply the lack of a present or living creator. We are willing 
for various decorous reasons to admit that God may have created 
" once upon a time,"' at some so-called or imaginary beginning 
of things ; but that he and he alone spiritually constitutes the 
present life, the actual or identical being, of all that our eyes be- 
hold, is what we are by no means prepared to acknowledge, and 
in defect of such preparation have recourse to nature as a tern- 



190 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 

porary opiate to troublesome thought. Thus what we call na- 
ture and objectify to our sensuous imagination as an absolute 
universality, is at most only a prejudice or false induction of the 
mind, whereby in its ignorance of God's creative power, or, 
what is the same thing, of the laws of spiritual being, it instinct- 
ively seeks to supply a common ratio — to invent an identical 
bond or basis — for all existence. 

Nature accordingly does not involve the mind. So far indeed 
is it from involving the mind, that it is itself rigidly involved by 
the mind as the necessary subjective base of its own objective 
evolution ; just as the marble is involved in the statue, and the 
mother in the child, as the necessary condition of these latter's 
existence. In short nature has no existence save in relation to 
human thought, or as affording needful relief to the specific con- 
tents of our senses ; and hence to talk of " the order of nature," 
or " the laws of nature," as if those cheap phrases expressed 
something more than a subjective cognition, something objective 
and absolute, some reality in short out of consciousness and 
binding upon the divine mind, is to talk childish nonsense. 
These terms are strictly invalid to philosophic thought, save as 
indicating the constancy of nature's subjection to the mind, to 
our mental necessities. They merely indicate the use she sub- 
serves in furnishing a hypothetical base to science, or giving it 
provisional flooring, foothold, fixity, during the protracted period 
of its spiritual infancy, or while it is still ignorant of creative 
order, and remains a contented dupe to the illusions of space 
and time. And to allow them any ontological significance there- 
fore, any really creative virtue, is simply to shut the intellect up 
to the moonlight and starlight of sense, and exclude it from the 
fervent splendors of the sun of faith. 

Yet it is just this unsuspected superstition and imbecility of 
our natural science, just this hypothetical or supposititious univer- 
sality it ascribes to nature, that supplies the main existing obsta- 
cle to philosophic thought, or the intellectual progress of society. 
Our science habitually takes for granted, not merely the relative, 
but the absolute universality of nature ; not merely her univer- 
sality with respect to all mineral, vegetable, and animal exist- 
ence, but her universality with respect to herself, her universality 
so to speak in the divine sight ; and hence we habitually rule 



THE SECKET OF SWEDENBORG. 191 

out the divine or spiritual as a vital element in consciousness, or 
legitimate factor in existence.* For if there be a generic or uni- 
versal existence, which is not merely the logical or contingent — 
but the real or absolute — ground of all specific or individual 
form, then of course all higher, or spiritual and divine, existence 
becomes ipso facto excluded, and our long and patient hope of 
immortality turns out unfounded. The essential of nature is 
passivity or community ; i. e. the predominance of substance to 
form, of subject to object. The essential of spirit again is 
activity or difference ; i. e. the predominance of the formal or 
objective element in consciousness over its substantial or subjec- 
tive element. It is obvious accordingly that the spiritual realm 
must be absolutely barred out of our intellectual cognizance, so 
long as the mind remains a prey to the illusions of our natural 
science, or holds nature to be a direct manifestation of divine 
power. It was the uniform result of Swedenborg's protracted 
intellectual intercourse with spirits and angels, that he found no 
form of spiritual existence either intelligible or conceivable, save 
upon the hypothesis of nature's rigid involution in man, or its 
essential subserviency to the soul. The fundamental difference 
he discovers between the good and evil spirit, or angel and devil, 
is that the latter confirms himself in the persuasion of nature's 
absoluteness, or her real universality, while the former holds 
her existence to be purely logical, — i. e. purely superficial and 
apparitional, like the image of one's person in a glass, — and 
pronounces every contrary judgment to be a fallacious inference 
from sense. 

XXVI. 

But I must bring my labor to a close, or else give my book a 
bulk which it was not designed to have. 

Let me assure the reader, then, that he need not look beyond 
this doctrine of nature's essential relativity to the human under- 
standing, her strict convertibility in fact with the mind of the 
race, to find the very clew he craves to Swedenborg's unprece- 
dented and immortal services to philosophy. The sole and com- 
plete meaning of nature, philosophically regarded, is, according 
* See Appendix, note H. 



192 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 

to Swedenborg, to furnish a logical ultimate or phenomenal back- 
ground to the human mind in its spiritual infancy, in order that 
the mind, being thus objectively mirrored to itself, might present 
a subjective floor or fulcrum every way apposite to the opera- 
tions of the creative spirit. This, neither more nor less, is 
Swedenborg' s philosophic secret. If nature, or the realm of the 
indefinite, did not at least logically intervene between creator and 
creature, or infinite or finite, giving the latter sensible projection 
from the former, or provisional reality to its own perception, the 
creature might still claim a physical existence conditioned upon 
the equilibrium of plenty and want, or pleasure and pain, but he 
would be utterly destitute of that moral or rational consciousness 
conditioned upon the equilibrium of good and evil, or of the 
divine and human natures, upon which nevertheless his entire 
spiritual being and destiny are grounded. Thus the sole and 
perfect key to Swedenborg's ontology, either for the present or 
any future world, is his point-blank denial of the ontological 
postulate save in the strictest reference to created existence. 
His entire ontologic doctrine is summed up in the literal veracity 
of creation, meaning by that term the truth of God's natural 
humanity, or of a most living and actual unition of the divine 
and human natures, avouching itself within the compass of man's 
historic consciousness, and generating there the stupendous har- 
monies of a spontaneous human society, fellowship, or brother- 
hood. 

Let the reader remember then that what forever separates 
Swedenborg intellectually from the fanatic, or man of mere 
faith, on the one hand, and from the sceptic, or man of mere 
science, on the other, is that he never looks upon nature as an 
ontological but only as a psychological phenomenon. He does 
not regard it as being, but only and at best as seeming to be. It 
is an appearance or semblance of being to an intelligence still 
uninstructed in the divine perfection. The ontological assump- 
tion which is common to our technical faith and our technical 
science alike is gross and revolting to Swedenborg, because it 
implies that nature not only actually appears to be, but in truth 
really is, quite independently of such appearance ; that she not 
only exists provisionally or in relation to the wants of our intel- 
ligence, but, exists also absolutely or in herself, and out of rela- 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 193 

tion to that intelligence. Mr. Mansel and Mr. Mill both alike 
assume nature's finality, or conceive her to be a veritable divine 
end, in place of a mere means to an end. They both alike 
(and quite unconsciously of course) suppose her to be an abso- 
lute and not a mere logical existence ; suppose her to constitute 
an obvious objective explanation of our being, and hence are 
at a hopeless remove from ever so much as suspecting her to be 
a mere subjective implication of our thought. And being thus 
identified in their philosophic origin, they can hardly expect to be 
widely separated in their philosophic destiny. In fact their gath- 
ering philosophic doom simulates that of the fabled Kilkenny cats, 
which having been conjoined by the tail, and then hung upon a 
clothes-line to struggle together with what hearty mutual aver- 
sion they might, could only struggle into, and not out of, each 
other's fatal embrace. Indeed everybody, religious or scientific, 
who holds to nature as a true universal and to man consequently 
as a true individual, is spiritually a Kilkenny cat, with his lower 
parts affronting the sky, and his higher parts caressing the earth. 
And precisely what Swedenborg does for the intellect is to re- 
lease it from this enforced feline posture, and restore it to upright 
and comfortable human form. That is to say, he teaches us in- 
flexibly to deny and, if need be, to deride nature's preten- 
sion to be anything more than a visual surface or shadow of 
reality stamped upon our mental sensory, just as a photographic 
negative is only a visual surface or shadow of some person or 
thing stamped upon a sensitive plate. 

Here I suppose I ought to conclude ; but I cannot, in fairness 
to the reader, do so without a word or two in practical applica- 
tion of the doctrine we have been canvassing to the question of 
idealism. 

The foible of our existing metaphysic is, as we have seen, 
that it accepts without misgiving the scientific postulate of an 
absolute or ontological basis for existence, and hence utterly 
voids the spiritual truth of creation. Indeed the only foe philos- 
ophy has encountered from the beginning — at least the only one 
capable of impeding her march to universal empire — is idealism : 
which is the pretension to confer upon existence a noumenal as 
well as phenomenal quality, or invest it with its own individ- 
uality no less than its own identity. Idealism is philosophy 



194 THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBOEG. 

turned upside down. That is to say, it amounts doctrinally to 
such an affiliation of the objective to the subjective element in 
consciousness, of the not-me to the me, of being to existence, 
form to substance, individuality to identity, as renders crea- 
tion simply impossible, and puts a point-blank contradiction upon 
science. It is philosophy mimicking the sport of children, whom 
we occasionally see bowing their heads till they bring them to a 
level with their feet, in order that they may catch a glimpse 
through their legs of an inverted world. And even idealism 
would have been a harmless foe to philosophy if it had ever been 
a frank and open one ; if it had not always been domiciled under 
her roof, and professed a sturdy friendship for her, while secretly 
working her downfall. For the aim of philosophy is twofold : 
1. To discriminate between the spiritual or objective, and the 
material or subjective contents of existence ; and 2. To hold the 
latter in rigid and rightful abeyance to the former. And what 
could be half so sure to defeat these aims as the empiricism of 
her professed adepts, who in accepting the testimony of sense, or 
a science conformed to sense, as final, first subvert her lively 
oracles by sinking the objective being of things in their subjec- 
tive existence, and then coolly inflate the latter element to 
divine or absolute dimensions? The idealist maintains that 
everything visible is exhaustively mortgaged to an invisible 
essence or subjectivity, which Plato and Hegel call its idea, 
and Kant its noumenon ; and that this inmost essence or sub- 
jectivity of the thing, constituting as it does the very self of its 
self, is the sole secret of its phenomenal apparition. And what 
does this amount to, unless it be to supersede the creator by the 
creature, or, what is the same thing, swamp the wholly uncon- 
scious and unselfish being of things in their wholly conscious 
and selfish existence, and thence reproduce it in glorified egotis- 
tic form ? In fact creation, according to idealism, and especially 
according to the Hegelian or consummate form of the doctrine, 
is the sincere, unaffected, apotheosis of egotism. And when 
philosophy has grown so anile and so blear-eyed to the proper 
objects of her contemplation, as to accept this rubbish of idealism, 
or consent to see in God only the infinite potentiality of our own 
finite conceit and imbecility, it is no wonder that the common 
sense of mankind votes philosophy herself a nuisance of the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 195 

first order, and cries aloud for some fresh resurgent form of 
heavenly truth. 

But idealism is not original even in its aberrations. It is at 
most an attempted systematization of one of the vulgarest preju- 
dices of the human understanding. What Kant means by his 
noumenon or thing-in-itself, what Plato and Hegel mean by their 
creative idea of things, is simply to objectify or render absolute 
the subjective element in consciousness, by making it supply its 
own genesis or ground of being ; so getting well rid forever of 
an actual or living creation. And this is exactly what we all 
mean when, under the coercion of the sensuous understanding, 
we attribute to ourselves, as we habitually do, an objective indi- 
viduality answering to our subjective identity ; a spiritual reality 
commensurate with our natural phenomenality. The only dif- 
ference between these philosophers and the people is this, and it 
is not to the advantage of the former : they reflectively confirm 
what to the latter remains a mere instinctual fallacy, and so ex- 
clude themselves from intellectual daylight. But we all alike 
instinctively practise the same hallucination. We all tacitly at- 
tribute to ourselves a noumenal or real quantity as the back- 
ground of our actual or phenomenal quality, and on that as- 
sumption appropriate to ourselves any amount of absolute good 
and absolute evil. Our moral instinct, our feeling of selfhood 
or freedom, is so sincere and unhesitating, is so natural in a word, 
that we cannot help claiming an absolute property in every word 
we say, and every deed we do ; so that whenever we happen to 
say or to do what our conscience approves or disapproves, we 
never suspect that both word and deed are a strictly normal 
effect of causes as impersonal or universal as those which regu- 
late the phenomena of physics, but on the contrary flatter our- 
selves that we are absolutely good or absolutely evil persons, 
who have the identical power which God has, of originating our 
own actions, or acting above law. 

But however this may be, whether idealism be a mere 
Adamic taint in the blood, or whether it be the legitimate out- 
come of exceptional fatuity, it is in all its forms the standing 
reproach of philosophy, keeping it forever oscillating, as men's 
-temperaments chance to incline them, between a frigid atheism 
and a torrid pantheism. The one very fruitful idea which it 



196 THE SECEET OF SWEDENBORG. 

is pledged to demolish — in the interest of the utterly unfruit- 
ful ones it is pledged to maintain — is the idea of creation as a 
living or actual operation of divine power ; and it does this by 
turning the creator logically into undeveloped creature, and the 
creature into developed creator. And philosophy has not an 
hour's honest vocation upon earth, if it be not to demonstrate 
the spiritual or ever-living truth of creation, in showing us that 
however much we may subjectively expand and collapse, how- 
ever much we may rejoice and mourn, however comparatively 
enlarged we may become in knowledge and wisdom, or com- 
paratively sunken we may remain in ignorance and superstition, 
we are all these things only to the extent of our own finite con- 
sciousness, and without the slightest corresponding compromise 
of objective or spiritual realities. No doubt the spiritual crea- 
tion implies the indissoluble marriage of creature and creator in 
order to vitalize it, just as the material cosmos implies a union 
of substance and form, subject and object, genus and species, in 
order to vitalize it. But this union is no passive or barren one 
in either case, but a most living or productive union ; the par- 
ties to it not being united in se or subjectively, which would be 
to confound or identify them, but only in prolification or objec- 
tively, which is to insure their utmost individuality or difference. 
It is impossible, in short, that there should be any subjective 
identity, but only the utmost conceivable subjective antagonism 
between creator and creature ; for the one is all fulness, the 
other all want ; the one all power, the other all dependence. 
The only unity they can aspire to consequently is an objective 
one, and objective unity is founded upon subjective diversity, 
being valid or feeble just as that diversity is profound or super- 
ficial. Now manifestly the subjective antagonism of creator and 
creature can never become avouched, and consequently their 
objective unity never become realized, unless creation be organ- 
ized first of all on a natural basis ; that is to say, upon the basis 
of the creature's felt or conscious identity in himself, and thence 
of his logical diversity from the creator. 

In short, the criterion between a true and a false philosophy 
is to be found in the estimate they severally put upon the sub- 
jective element in experience, or the function of consciousness ; 
as whether it furnishes a direct or only an inverse analogy of 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 197 

the creative truth. The absolute truth of course — the truth 
of which we are wholly unconscious — is that God alone gives 
us being, and that unceasingly ; that in hina we live and move 
and have our being at every moment. The apparent or 
phenomenal truth — the only truth of which we are or can be 
conscious — is that we have our life or being in ourselves ; and 
hence that the creative relation to us is not inward or spiritual, 
involving our natural generation, or the gift of selfhood to us, as 
form involves substance, but exclusively an outward or moral 
relation, evolving our personal absoluteness towards him, as 
substance evolves form, and legitimating therefore on our part 
every extreme of alternate hope and fear. Idealism makes this 
fallacious testimony of consciousness absolute in objectifying the 
me, or giving it a noumenal as well as phenomenal truth, an un- 
conscious as well as a conscious validity. It first denaturalizes 
the me, or discharges it of finiteness, by making nature properly 
objective to it under the name of the not-me; and then of 
course it is left free to spiritualize it, or run it into infinitude, by 
giving it a noumenal or unconscious existence more real and 
valid than its phenomenal or conscious one. This pretension 
gives of course an effectual quietus to creation, save in the most 
juggling and mendicant sense of the term ; for if I have not 
only a phenomenal or conscious subjectivity, but also, and much 
more a noumenal or unconscious one, it is not of the least im- 
portance where you see fit to place it, — whether in God or out 
of him, — for it is essentially absolute or underived ; and I con- 
sequently am an uncreated being, whatever sensible appearances 
and rational probabilities may be alleged to the contrary. 

A true philosophy — a philosophy consonant with the mind's 
perennial needs — feels none of this morbid itching to inflame 
the subjective element in consciousness to absolute or objective 
dimensions, and contentedly leaves it purely phenomenal. 
Why ? Because what alone a true philosophy has at heart is to 
vindicate the spiritual truth of creation ; and it perceives accord- 
ingly at a glance that that truth can never be vindicated, but 
only refuted, if the creature may rightfully claim in himself not 
merely an actual or conscious life, but also a real or unconscious 
and absolute one. For in that case evidently the created sub- 
jectivity overlaps and appropriates to itself the creative one ; 



198 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 

and creation philosophically viewed is anything but the subjective 
muddling or confounding of creator and creature, -which the 
Hegelian dialectic makes of it. It is in fact their sharpest possible, 
or infinite and eternal, subjective discrimination in order to their 
only possible subsequent objective union. The inexpugnable 
necessity of all true creation is, that the creature be subjectively 
or in se totally alien to, and unidentified with, the creator ; for 
unless there be this subjective disunion to begin with, how shall 
we claim their subsequent objective or spiritual union ? Obvi- 
ously if the statue, the house, the pump, the watch, the table, 
the pitcher, the ship, the engine, I make or give ideal form to, be- 
comes actually made only in so far as I concede to the demands 
of its subjectivity, in giving it projection from myself by the 
mediation of some neutral substance, so a fortiori the things 
which God creates or gives moral form to can only become 
created in so far forth as he endows them first of all with sub- 
jective existence or selfhood, which shall eternally alienate 
them from — i. e. make them other than — himself. If the life- 
less things we make subjectively alienate themselves from us 
their maker, and ally themselves exclusively with the base 
material out of which they are made, so with far greater reason 
must the living creatures of God repugn all subjective identity 
with their creator, and tolerate at most only an objective or un- 
conscious relation to him. I say " with far greater reason " : 
for manifestly the disproportion between creator and creature is 
infinitely greater than that between maker and made : between 
painter and picture, for example : so that whatever can be alleged 
in the way of contrast between the constituents of the lesser re- 
lation is infinitely more true in application to those of the 
grander relation. If then the unconscious effigy of man I pro- 
duce from the reluctant marble, vividly disown all substantial 
or subjective identity with myself, in restricting my activity to 
the interests exclusively of its ideal form, or objective individu- 
ality, much more vividly must the breathing, conscious, exultant 
man himself refuse to identify his proper subjectivity or self- 
hood with the power that creates him ; and relegate the total 
activity of that power to the depths of his spiritual, objective, 
and therefore unconscious being. 

Thus a true philosophy will never be found exalting the me. 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 199 

or subjective element in experience, out of conscious or phe- 
nomenal into absolute or noumenal proportions ; for the simple 
but sufficing reason that any such procedure must be fatal to 
the integrity of creation, and hence to consciousness. For con- 
sciousness is the invariable badge of created existence, being the 
product in every case of a marriage between creator and 
creature ; and if accordingly you divest my subjectivity of its 
purely conscious or phenomenal character, as you do when you 
make it noumenal or absolute, you instantly reduce me to 
essential unconsciousness, or turn me into uncreated being, which 
is God. The only guaranty of continued or permanent ex- 
istence which I as a created being enjoy, is what is furnished by 
my ineffaceable natural identity. Destroy this, and you destroy 
my sole and total ground of consciousness, or doom me to 
absorption in the infinite. The more thoroughly and exquisitely 
I am myself — the more intense and expansive my self-conscious- 
ness — the more thorough and exquisite, of course, on the one 
hand, will be my subjective or felt alienation from God, but also 
and for this very reason, on the other hand, the more profound 
and intimate my objective or real sympathy and conjunction 
with him. No doubt the creative love is infinite, or will 
always be able to bless its creature beyond his hopes or desires. 
But a prior condition of such beatitude on the creature's part 
is, that he exist in himself, enjoy phenomenal selfhood or free- 
dom, undergo subjective or conscious estrangement from his 
creator. If, for example, the creature should be in himself or 
naturally godlike, he could not be accessible to the subsequent 
divine benefaction, because he would already possess in himself or 
absolutely whatsoever such benefaction implies. But if, on the 
contrary, he be seTf-alienated, $<?//-projected, se?f-distanced from 
God to the extent of a sheer oppugnancy, he will then be in the 
best — and indeed only — possible condition of receptivity to- 
wards the divine communication, and will react upon it with the 
total force of his nature. Hence I say that God spiritually 
creates us or causes us objectively to be, only in so far as he 
empowers us first of all subjectively to appear, or exist in our 
own natural lineaments, our own inextinguishable self-conscious- 
ness : which is only saying, in a less concise way, that our natural 
or moral history is a necessary involution, and not evolution, of 
our spiritual creation. 



200 THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOKG. 

I hope that none of my readers will dispose himself to reject 
these observations, simply because they are in advance of re- 
ceived maxims. It is my own firm conviction that the real 
source of the popular disesteem into which philosophy has fallen, 
is traceable to nothing in philosophy itself, but exclusively to the 
indolent and imbecile habit philosophers have of confounding 
philosophy with science, or identifying the realm of our spiritual 
being with that of our moral or natural existence. 

Our moral existence — our natural manhood — is a mere con- 
stitutional implication of our spiritual being ; a mere incident of 
our God- ward or objective possibilities ; and hence it is void to 
philosophy of substantive or independent worth. Philosophy — 
it cannot be too sharply nor too often affirmed — is directly con- 
cerned only with truths of being, which lie within or above con- 
sciousness. Science, on the contrary, is directly concerned only 
with facts of existence, which lie without or below consciousness. 
In other words, the realm of philosophy proper is the uncon- 
scious realm, the realm of the not-me; while the realm of 
science is exclusively the conscious realm, the realm of the me. 
Briefer still, philosophy deals only with man's inorganic inter- 
ests : science with his organic ones. These two realms — the or- 
ganic and inorganic one, the me and the not-me, science and 
philosophy — are subjectively most opposite, being objectively 
fused or united only in life, which is the experience of a rational 
subject. For example : I am identified to my own conscious- 
ness with my organization, that is to say, with the realm of my 
relations to nature and my fellow- man, and so far of course I 
am a legitimate object of scientific research, analysis, and 
augury. But I am yet all the while being unconsciously indi- 
vidualized — i. e. set free from the bondage of my natural iden- 
tity, lifted above the realm of my relations to nature and society 
— by a most subtle inward chemistry Avhich converts all that 
luxuriant show of moral life in me into an evidence or attesta- 
tion of a profounder spiritual death. Were I left to the sole 
tutelage of my rational instincts, or the conclusions of the scien- 
tific understanding, I should doubtless never detect this subter- 
ranean murmur of death, nor ever dream consequently of that 
realm of life immortal and ineffable, to which death is the only 
practicable passage. On the contrary, I should go on to suppose 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBORG. 201 

that everything really is as it seems ; and that onr true indi- 
viduality consequently is not the regenerate spiritual one we de- 
rive from God, but the generic moral one which we derive from 
our race or past ancestry. But conscience is the divine safe- 
guard interposed to obviate this fatality. It is the cherubic 
sword which turns every way to bar all access to the tree of life, 
on the part of those who contentedly munch the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge of good and evil, and demand no diviner nourish- 
ment. Or, to say the same thing in less figurative speech, the 
incessant office of conscience, wherever it exists in unadulterate 
potency, is to give its subject a pungent conviction of the 
spiritual disease, disorder, and death which vitalize his most 
flowering and fruitful and faultless moral consciousness ; a living 
experience of the abject and absolute dearth of good which 
underlies and inwardly answers to all that outward vigor and 
plenitude of life. 

The regenerate individuality which is thus wrought in us by 
the divine power, through the humiliation of our moral righte- 
ousness, is, I repeat, a totally unconscious one, being made up 
of our relations to a good which is infinite, and a truth which is 
absolute. It is not therefore, however, any the less, but only 
all the more real. The sole realm of unreality is the conscious 
realm, the realm of the me ; because manifestly the me is a purely 
finite or phenomenal existence, conditioned as to its lower or 
sensitive forms upon a rigid equilibrium of pleasure and pain, 
and as to its higher or rational and moral forms, upon a rigid 
equilibrium of good and evil ; and incapable in either case of 
surviving a permanent disturbance of such equilibrium. Let 
pleasure or pain acquire an absolute ascendency in my organiza- 
tion, and the organization will instantly cease to endure. Let 
good or evil obtain an absolute ascendency of my will, and the 
will itself instantly disappears. Our voluntary, which is our 
moral and rational force, is contingent upon such an exact 
though unrecognized balance of good and evil in the social 
sphere, or the world of our relations to our fellow-men, as leaves 
us consciously free, or invests us with the felt ownership of our 
own actions ; just as our instinctual or sensitive life, which is 
what we have in common with mineral, plant, and animal, is 
contingent upon such an exact though unrecognized balance of 



202 



THE SECRET OF SWEDEXBORG. 



pleasure and pain in the physical sphere, or the realm of our re- 
lations to nature, as makes us sensibly free, or invests us also 
with the felt ownership of our appetites and passions. We 
have no absolute, but only a conscious or phenomenal, control 
either of our own actions or our own passions ; all the power we 
possess in either case being contingent upon our relations to 
nature and society. And if this be so, if our conscious life, 
the experience we have of ourselves as posited by nature and 
society, claim no absolute but only a contingent worth, no ob- 
jective but only a subjective reality, then clearly we are justified 
in saying that the conscious realm, the realm of the me, is with 
respect to the unconscious realm, the realm of the not-me, a 
pure illusion or unreality ; and hence that whatsoever legitimate 
interest it affords to science, all whose research is limitedlo what 
is finite and relative in existence, it yet offers only a reflected 
interest to philosophy, since philosophy never sees in the finite 
anything but a most specious mask or cloak of the infinite, in 
the relative anything but a most subtle revelation of the absolute ; 
with a view in both cases alike to the gradual and eventually 
complete propitiation of our obdurate and brutish intelligence. 

Thus philosophy is science no longer controlled by sense, but 
enlightened by revelation. Science instructed by sense puts 
an eternal divorce between creator and creature, by reciprocally 
fimtmg them, or proving them both alike subject to the laws of 
space, time, and person. But science enlightened by revelation 
reciprocally infinites creator and creature, i. e. denies every 
real and allows only a logical contrariety between them, by 
showing the laws of space, time, and person to be sheerly il- 
lusory, as possessing a purely subjective and by no means ob- 
jective virtue. That is to say, it exhibits a doctrine of creation 
which perfectly reconciles the creative and the created natures 
by showing the creature (subjectively regarded) to be the 
creator himself naturally finited : i. e. identified with all ani- 
mal, all vegetable, and all mineral substance ; and the creator 
(objectively regarded) to be the creature himself spiritually 
infimted: i. e. individualized in human form, and eternally re- 
deemed from all mineral, vegetable, and animal limitation. He 
is our substance, and we are his form or semblance. He is our 
being, and we are his seeming or image. But as the law of the 



THE SECRET OF SWEDENBOEG. 203 



form or image is, that it be in itself an inversion of the sub- 
stance which projects it, so the whole aim of God's providence in 
nature and history is to redeem us from the tyranny of this law, 
by converting us out of inverse natural images of his perfection, 
into a direct spiritual likeness of it ; which he does by exalting 
our consciousness out of its physical and moral rudiments, into 
perfected social and aesthetic form. Practically then, according 
to Swedenborg, the one thing needful to the permanent recon- 
struction of philosophy, is its frank, intelligent acknowledgment 
of the divine natural humanity : crucified, dead, and buried 
in all the forms of our natural — or physical and moral — con- 
sciousness, in which the vir, or feminine and individual element, 
is seen to be pitiably servile to the homo, or masculine and 
universal element ; but glorified, risen again, triumphant over 
death and hell, in all the forms of our regenerate — or social 
and aesthetic — consciousness, where the homo or created man is 
seen no longer coercing, but assiduously promoting, the vir or 
creative man. This appears to me the plain philosophic import 
of Swedenborg's teaching, that our intellectual resurrection out 
of the mire of sense — which is the final evolution of the 
human mind in complete harmony with God's perfection — is 
rigidly contingent upon our renouncing our old and fallacious 
subjective conception of life, as being primarily universal or 
natural, and only subordinately thereto individual or spiritual, 
and cordially acknowledging it henceforth in its new or real and 
objective aspect, as being essentially spiritual or individual, and 
only existentially, i. e. by the strictest derivation thence, natural 
or universal. In other words, the future progress of the mind 
depends upon our faithfully separating between two things 
which have been hitherto hopelessly confounded, being and 
existence, life and death, freedom and bondage : the former 
interest comprehending the entire realm of man's social and 
aesthetic objectivity, which lifts him forever out of himself and 
allies him eternally with God, by making delight not duty, 
spontaneity not will, freedom not force, the exclusive rule of his 
action ; the latter comprehending the entire realm of his phys- 
ical and moral subjectivity, which immerses him eternally in him- 
self, by making him and keeping him the helpless and dis- 
honored tool of nature and convention. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



Note A. Page 12. 

In recommending Mr. "White's biography to my readers as altogether 
the best life of Swedenborg extant, I feel bound to say at the same 
time that 1 differ from him utterly in many of his incidental judgments 
of Swedenborg, some of which seem to me simply prudish, and almost 
wilfully ungracious and ungenerous to his subject, notably those relating 
to the inferential injustice clone by Swedenborg to woman. I cannot 
help thinking that Mr. White's private animosity to the swedenborgian 
sect has insensibly tempted him to a somewhat capricious disregard 
of his author's fair fame before the world. Every sincere student of 
Swedenborg — that is to say, every one who appreciates the enormous 
but distinctively impersonal or philosophic benefits his books are des- 
tined to confer upon the intellect — must along with Mr. White regret 
to see his harmless name perverted to the ends of a petty sectarian 
ambition, and even made to sanction what seems to be a particularly 
gratuitous exhibition of ecclesiastical zeal. But this sort of thing 
should not tempt us into any injustice towards Swedenborg himself, 
who has as little responsibility for it as the babe unborn. Indeed I 
should be sorry to hold the members of the swedenborgian sect them- 
selves responsible for the glamour they have cast upon Swedenborg's 
good name. On the contrary, I feel a sincere respect for these gentle- 
men, within the very limited range of my knowledge of them, and am 
very glad to concede that nothing but the insane spirit of sect could 
have tempted men so amiable to engage in their unhandsome enterprise. 
None of the older sects parades a pretension at once so senseless and so 
blasphemous as they do, when they advertise themselves to the world 
as the New Jerusalem, or the end of all divine prophecy and promise 
for man upon earth and in heaven. Just conceive of the New 
Jerusalem deliberately posing for the world's recognition ! In fact 
just think of any one who has ever breathed a breath of God's life in 
our nature, turning out such an incontinent peacock as to publish the 
fact, or overtly profess to constitute a divine consummation in the 
earth ! No doubt these persons would promptly disown, in their civic 



208 APPENDIX. 

capacity, the small and vulgar arrogance they habitually exhibit in 
their ecclesiastical aspect. But what does this prove ? Nothing what- 
ever but that they unwittingly allow their sectarian animus gravely to 
compromise the unblemished private repute which they would otherwise 
be entitled to enjoy. 

My friend, the Eev. Mr. Barrett, put forth a little book not long 
since bearing upon the sins of his people, which was entitled Catholicity 
of the New- Church, and Uncatholicity of New- Churchmen, and in which 
he undertook to show, while viewing the new church as a strict eccle- 
siasticism, that it had no right whatever to an ecclesiastical temper. I 
never could comprehend the logic of my friend's demonstration. For 
surely if the new church be ecclesiastically constituted, its members 
can hardly do otherwise than cultivate an ecclesiastical spirit. If what 
my friend calls the new church be catholic in its spirit, then surely 
new-churchmen cannot be uncatholic in theirs. For, as Mr. Barrett's 
favorite author would say, churchmen exist only from the church, as 
the church in its turn subsists only by them. There is no church with- 
out churchmen, and no churchmen without a church ; any more than 
there is a soul without a body, or a body without a soul. Whatsoever 
any visible church is, its members are, and whatsoever its members are 
the church is. If Mr. Barrett hold that the new church is a corporate 
organization with corporate rites and ceremonies, he has no business to 
go beyond its visible corporeity to get at its soul or spirit. What is 
visible about it alone declares what is invisible, and he has manifestly 
no right to allege of the latter what does not strictly belong to the 
former. If the church be catholic its members must be catholic, for 
the simple reason that the church has no existence apart from its mem- 
bers. If, again, Mr. Barrett holds that the church is a spiritual insti- 
tution exclusively, being nothing less than the invisible life of God in 
the soul of man, then clearly its members are not to be carnally but 
spiritually discerned and estimated. So far as they belong to the 
church, they are invisible to the eye of sense, and reveal their existence 
only to those who are of a similar spirit or character with them. In 
this state of things Mr. Barrett is entitled to say : " The new church is 
catholic in spirit, and any specific A, B, or C who foolishly parades its 
name to the exclusion of the rest of mankind is therefore a spiritual 
sot." But he is not entitled to say abstractly, that while the new church 
is catholic, new-churchmen themselves have any power to be other- 
wise. 

The fact is, Mr. Barrett has been keeping bad company, and has 
thereby got his perceptions somewhat clouded. He is a lover of 
Swedenborg, a disinterested lover, who values his author for his broad 



APPENDIX. 209 

human worth altogether, and not for any advantage which may possibly 
accrue to his own ecclesiastical ambition. Having this honest admira- 
tion of Swedenborg, it naturally afflicts him to see his great services to 
mankind attempted to be monopolized by the preposterous little sect 
which unblushingly styles itself The New Jerusalem (or God's finished 
work in human nature), and thus betrays Swedenborg to the just sus- 
picion of all modest persons. Mr. Barrett's book proves that these 
people know nothing worth telling of Swedenborg, and that they are 
capable, in their corporate capacity, of a petty ecclesiastical tyranny and 
dishonesty which the more experienced sects are getting ashamed of. 
But then the wonder is that he should afflict himself with their mis- 
deeds. Why does he not rather abandon the whole concern, and bless 
God, as Dogberry says, that he is rid of an encumbrance ? The reason 
doubtless is that Mr. Barrett himself is still too much victimized by 
that wretched sophistry which forever unspiritualizes the church, in 
identifying it with some specific apparatus of priest and sacrifice that 
once symbolized it when it was itself nonexistent, or as yet only in 
the gristle. 

He is thus all the while unconsciously ministering to the spirit he 
condemns. For it is impossible that any man, or any set of men, 
should esteem themselves personally or ritually more acceptable to 
God than others, without being to that extent spiritually depraved. 
As long, therefore, as Mr. Barrett and other conscientious students of 
Swedenborg fidget themselves about any ecclesiastical organization 
whatever, as falling within the scope of new church principles, this 
little sect, that now worries them so much, will never be hurt, but only 
helped by their opposition. For, with the class of people who can be 
duped by this shallow conception of the church, a present possession of 
the territory in dispute is nine points of the law. The sect, in short, 
needs advertising ; and Mr. Barrett, in spite of himself, is made to sup- 
ply this want, so long as he makes the new church a visible economy 
in the earth, and only quarrels with some peculiarities of its transient 
administration. 

The swedenborgian sect assumes to be the New Jerusalem, which is 
the figurative name used in the Apocalypse to denote God's perfected 
spiritual work in human nature ; and under this tremendous designation 
it is content to employ itself in doing — what ? why in pouring new 
wine into old bottles with such a preternatural solicitude for the tena- 
city of the bottles, as necessitates an altogether comical indifference to 
the quality of the wine. New wine cannot safely go into old bottles 
but upon one condition, which is, that the wine had previously become 
swipes, or was originally very small beer. In fact, the swedenborgian 
14 



210 APPENDIX. 

sect, viewed as to its essential aims, though of course not as to its pro- 
fessed ones, is only on the part of its movers a strike for higher wages, 
that is, for higher ecclesiastical consideration than the older sects en- 
joy at the popular hands. And like all strikes, it will probably suc- 
cumb at last to the immense stores of fat (or popular respect) tradition- 
ally accumulated under the ribs of the old organizations, and enabling 
them to hybernate through any stress of cold weather, merely by suck- 
ing their thumbs, or without assimilating any new material. No doubt 
the insurgents impoverish the older sects to the extent of their own 
bulk ; but they do not substantially affect them in popular regard, be- 
cause the people, as a rule, care little for truth, but much for the good 
that animates it ; very little for dogmas, but very much for that un- 
deniably human substance which underlies all dogmas, and makes them 
savory, whether technically sound or unsound. And here the new sect 
is at a striking disadvantage with all its more ancient competitors ; for 
these are getting ashamed of their old narrowness, and are gradually 
expanding into some show of sympathy with human want. The sect 
of the soi-disanl New Jerusalem, on the other hand, deliberately empties 
itself of all interest in the hallowed struggle which society is every- 
where making for her very existence against established injustice and 
sanctified imposture, in order to concentrate its energy and prudence 
upon the washing and dressing, upon the larding and stuffing, upon the 
embalming and perfuming, of its own invincibly squalid little corpus. 
This pharisaic spirit, the spirit of separatism or sect, is the identical 
spirit of hell ; and to attempt compassing any consideration for one's self 
at the divine hands, by making one's self to differ from other people, or 
claiming a higher divine sanctity than they enjoy, is to encounter the 
only sure damnation. According to Swedenborg, or rather according 
to the gospel of the lord Jesus Christ, of which he was in all things the 
unflinching echo, a literal or differential righteousness among men is in- 
compatible with their spiritual safety ; because every man is saved by 
virtue of his unity with his kind, and not in contravention of it. In 
short, natural fact or seeming is, according to the evangelic doctrine, 
the invariable inverse of spiritual truth or being ; and the most fault- 
less surface, therefore, of outward or moral decorum, is apt to cover 
the most odious depths of inward or spiritual obliquity. 

Let the reader then, whatever else he may fairly or foolishly con- 
clude against Swedenborg, acquit him point-blank of countenancing this 
abject ecclesiastical drivel, this sectarian " second childhood and mere 
oblivion," with which people who ought to know better are availing 
themselves of the popular ignorance concerning him, to push them- 
selves into ecclesiastical consideration. No one who comes to Sweden- 



APPENDIX. . 211 

borg's books without some latent intention to eke out his own dilap- 
idated ecclesiastical drapery by skilful picking and stealing among the 
angels, can help seeing that no more unsavory name than his could 
possibly be employed wherewith to bait sectarian mouse-traps. He is 
no blear-eyed Rip Van Winkle dug up out of the drowsy past to affront 
the lively present, but a man of the freshest sympathies, and principles 
that contemplate only the broadest or most impersonal human issues. 
In a word, he is an unaffectedly genial, wise, and good man, all the 
higher parts of whose mind are bathed in the peace and light of heaven, 
and who aspires to no manner of leadership among men, because the 
access of an interior life has weaned him from that restless bondage. 
And yet, to say nothing of the endless charm of truth in reference to 
the highest themes in which Swedenborg's writings abound, it seems to 
me that the unconscious incomparable realism of their style prophesies 
a new literature. How a man can leave his own personality so wholly 
behind him as to disown every faintest grimace of conventional literary 
art, and become absolutely lost to your regard in the sheer splendor of 
the truth he recounts, is a daily wonder to me. 

The gigantic reach of the man's mind, too, in bringing back every 
subtlest ineffable splendor of heaven, and every subtlest ineffable hor- 
ror of hell, to the purest phenomenality, to the mere shadowy at- 
testation, positive and negative, of a Divine Natural Manhood, which 
they are both alike impotent to create, or even by themselves to con- 
stitute ; his vast erudition, untouched by pedantry, and never for an in- 
stant lending itself to display; his guileless modesty under the most 
unexampled experiences ; his tender humility and ready fellowship 
with every lowest form of good ; the free, unconscious movement of 
his thought, reflected from the great calm realities with which he was 
in habitual intellectual contact ; his unstudied speech, bubbling up at 
times into a childish naivete and simplicity, — all these things, while they 
take his books out of the category of mere literary performances, and 
convert them into an epoch, as it were, of our associated mental history, 
■ — into a great upheaval or insurrection of the human mind itself, — yet 
assuredly reduce the feats of our sincerest theologians and philosophers 
to the dimensions of ignorant prattle, and turn the performances of our 
ordinary literary posturemongers into stale and mercenary circus tricks. 

It is sheer fatuity to conceive a man like this aspiring "to clean out 
meeting-houses," or projecting any such frivolity and futility as eccle- 
siastical reform. He was not a bit of a sexton, and the mind of an 
undertaker dwelt not in him. His intercourse was wholly among the 
living ; death, in the undertaker's sense of that phenomenon, having 
lost all sanctity to his imagination, by revealing its long imposture, and 



212 APPENDIX. 

confessing itself no more the finished flower of life, but its succulent 
root and beginning ; no more its lurid, menacing west, but its dewy, 
tender, and most motherly east. In fact, Swedenborg saw that the 
most sacredly established life of Christendom, which was its ecclesias- 
tical life, constituted its profoundest death ; and he accordingly never 
counselled nor contemplated any resuscitation for that life, but only 
from it. To this figurative extent it is true that no undertaker ever 
betrayed a jollier scent of mortality than he. But then, unlike the 
undertaker, he left the dead to do their own burying, and went on him- 
self to describe the New Jerusalem, not by any means as a more trinket- 
ted set of literal Jews, complacently arrogating to themselves that 
sacred repute, in disparagement of an old tarnished set, but exclusively 
as a new life in man, coextensive with the lord's unseen presence 
and operation in the natural sphere of the mind ; or, what is the same 
thing, with the redeemed and regenerate nature of man. He never 
lets fall a syllable from which you might infer that he conceived the 
momentous changes taking place in the spiritual world or the realm of 
mind to involve the slightest interference with the existing ecclesiasti- 
cisms. Describing " the last judgment " which took place, he affirms, 
in the world of spirits about a hundred years ago, and which he pro- 
fesses to have seen in great part, he says that " the state of the church 
will be henceforth similar outwardly, but dissimilar inwardly ; because 
the man of the church will enjoy more freedom of thought on matters 
of faith, or on spiritual things which relate to heaven, spiritual liberty 
having been restored to him. For all things in the heavens and the 
hells are now reduced into order " ; and so forth. Again he says : 
" I have had various conversations with the angels concerning the state 
of the church hereafter. They said that things to come they know 
not, such knowledge belonging to the lord alone ; but that they do 
know that the slavery and captivity in which the man of the church 
has heretofore been is removed, and that now from restored liberty he 
can better perceive spiritual truths." I quote from his tract entitled 
The Last Judgment, 73, 74. 

The moral of my story is that no one has the least right to make 
Swedenborg the stalking-horse of his own spiritual imbecility ; and 
that if any of my readers would inquire wisely concerning that author, 
he should by all means consult his writings at first-hand, and leave the 
swedenborgians diligently alone ; just as in inquiring about Moses, he 
would consult the pentateuch and ignore Chatham street; or about 
Christ, he would consult the gospels only, and give a very wide berth 
indeed to the pope of Rome and the archbishop of Canterbury. 

I may as well in this connection notice a recent work by Mr. Tafel, 



APPENDIX. 213 

of Chicago, called Emanuel Swedenborg as Philosopher and Man of 
Science. It is an affectionate and even enthusiastic tribute to Sweden- 
borg's unrecognized merits as a philosopher and man of science, made 
up of the various eulogistic notices his life and writings have attracted 
from men of letters. No doubt the world owes it to the memory of its 
distinguished men to preserve an honest record of its obligations to 
them ; but Swedenborg would willingly have forgiven it the debt in his 
own case. I suspect that he would blush crimson if he could once get 
a sight of Mr. Tafel's book, and discover himself to have become the 
object of so much cheap personal laudation on the part of people who 
apparently are quite indifferent to the only claim he himself preferred 
to men's attention, that, namely, of a spiritual seer. Whatever his 
scientific and philosophic worth may have been to his own eyes, and 
we may be very sure that it was never very large, nothing can be 
more certain than that it became utterly obliterated there by the chance 
which subsequently befell him of an open intercourse with the world 
of spirits. He at once deserted his scientific pursuits after this event, 
and never recurred to their published memorials as offering the least 
interest to rational curiosity ; while he affirmed, on the contrary, that 
the facts of personal experience which he was then undergoing possessed 
the very highest philosophic and scientific interest, as shedding a bril- 
liant light upon every conceivable problem of man's origin and destiny. 
In looking somewhat attentively through Mr. Tafel's pages, I see no 
evidence that any of the writers he cites had the least regard for Swe- 
denborg from Swedenborg's own point of view ; while I see abounding 
evidence of their being disposed to yield him an extravagant personal 
homage, than which, I am persuaded, nothing could be more offensive 
to his own wishes. This petty partisan zeal is carried so far as to 
beget a very revolting note in one place (page 60), in which two men 
who honestly thought Swedenborg insane are reported to have sub- 
sequently gone mad themselves, with such hilarious satisfaction, as 
leaves no doubt on the reader's mind that the reporter really supposed 
the divine honor vindicated by that shabby catastrophe. If a suspicion 
of Swedenborg's sanity were an offence to the gods actually punishable 
by loss of reason, I know of no hospital large enough to house the 
victims which would ensue from that judgment within the limits even 
of my own scant acquaintance. Nothing, indeed, in my opinion, can be 
more logical and salutary for certain minds than a suspicion of Swe- 
denborg's sanity. And certainly nothing could be more ludicrously 
inapposite to the needs of those who appreciate his real, though inci- 
dental, services to science and philosophy, than a certificate to his merit 
in those respects would be from the hand of all the technical experts 
on the planet. 



214 APPENDIX. 



Note B. Page 76. 

I hope no one will attribute to me the spirit of a textuary in culling 
the following samples from Swedenborg, or deem me so frivolous as to 
feel the least solicitude in regard to Swedenborg's private opinions 
about the church, or about anything else in fact. Any one who in 
reading Swedenborg conceives that his teaching is intended to be 
authoritative is very inexcusable for having anything more to do with 
him on Swedenborg's own principles. For he has done his best through- 
out his remarkable writings to rob even God almighty himself of all 
authoritative prestige, of all despotic sway, by proving him instinct 
with such a tenderness for human freedom, such a reverence for the 
human selfhood, such a faultless consideration for man's spiritual pros- 
pects and possibilities, as to permit every most revolting issue of our 
moral consciousness, or quasi freedom, rather than jeopard it for a 
moment. Our spiritual dignity and destiny, according to Swedenborg, 
lie so near the heart of God, as to make hell no less than heaven the 
ai-gument of his amazing love ; as to make the bosom delight of the 
tawniest devil, in fact, just as sacred to his tolerance, just as exempt 
from outside or arbitrary interference, as that of the fairest angel. Only 
conceive, then, what a perverse — nay, what an idiotic — homage you 
render Swedenborg, if you attempt coercing him into a relation of petty 
control over men's faith and practice, which only a very evil person is 
capable of bearing. Besides, Swedenborg's natural cast of mind is 
utterly unauthoritative, utterly averse, not merely to command, but even 
to persuade ; so that if any one will insist upon having an infallible 
guide as to the truths his own great mind ought to acknowledge, and 
the goods his own large heart ought to cherish, Swedenborg is not the 
least in the world the man he is in search of. Any vulgar catholic or 
mormon missionary will infinitely better promote his fine spiritual ad- 
vantage. There is actually no writer worth naming, after Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, certainly no living writer, whose personality, 
both moral and intellectual, is so little grandiose as Swedenborg's, i. e. 
so little melodramatic or impressive ; none who exerts so little volun- 
tary influence upon his reader. In fact the total fashion of the man's 
mind is in this respect so evangelic or celestial — it contrasts, for ex- 
ample, so vividly with my own depraved intellectual habit — that if it 
were not for the things he incessantly says, which are manifestly un- 
derived from himself, and the clear prophetic glimpses he perpetually 
gives us into the very heart of creative truth — truth that none of our 
poets, or visionaries, or sages, or philanthropists begins even as yet to 



APPENDIX. 215 

babble — the perusal of his books would be extremely difficult to me, 
would be in fact little short of a downright penance. As it is, they 
make all other books seem cheap and trivial, turning them at most into 
a sort of intellectual " hock-and-soda-water," good to fillip a jaded mental 
palate into a momentary flush of exhilaration, but not the least fit to 
organize a new one. 

No, all I propose to do in this place is to throw together a few sen- 
tences from Swedenborg's multitudinous books, bearing upon the church 
in man, which may show to those who are curious about his writings 
what a noble and novel doctrine they yield upon that subject, even in 
our liberal day and generation. He, good man, would be unfeignedly 
astonished and disgusted to learn that any persons had been silly enough, 
or insolent enough, to mechanize a new sect into inglorious existence 
out of a pretended regard for his writings. But the best counsel I can 
offer my reader is to give no heed to my opinions about Swedenborg's 
books, nor any one else's opinions, but to consult them for himself. I 
am sure he will say in the end that no better counsel was ever given 
him. 

" The church of the Lord is both internal and external ; its internal 
consisting of charity, and whatsoever beliefs are congruous with charity, 
and its external in goodness of life, or the works of charity and faith." 
Apocalypse Explained, 403. This of course is the living or invisible 
church. Thus he says again : " The church's internal consists in 
heartily willing what is good, and its external consists in doing what is 
good." This is the church, the living or invisible church, known only 
to God, and all unknown to itself. But now he immediately goes on to 
characterize the sham or visible church : " But the external church " — 
not as before, " the church, internal and external " — " consists in the 
devout performance of ceremonial worship. But this ceremony, which 
simulates worship, is like a shell without any kernel, since it is the ex- 
ternal surviving the internal ; and when the church has come to this 
pass, it is at an end." Arcana Celestia, 6587. 

" Doctrinal differences do not distinguish churches before the lord, 
this distinction being effected by a life in consonance with the things 
of doctrine, all of which, when true, regard charity as their base, for 
what is the end and design of doctrine if not to teach how man should 
live ? The several churches in Christendom are doctrinally distinguished 
into roman catholics, lutherans, and calvinists. This diversity of des- 
ignations arises solely from the things of doctrine, and would never 
have taken place if the members of the church had made love to the 
lord, and charity towards the neighbor, the leading point of faith. 
Things of doctrine would, in that case, turn out to be mere divergencies 



216 APPENDIX. 

of opinion in regard to the mysteries of faith, which they who are true 
christians would leave every one to believe as his particular conscience 
directed him, whilst it would be the language of their hearts that he is 
a true christian who lives as one, that is, as the lord teaches. Thus 
one church would be formed out of all these divided churches, and all 
disagreements incident to doctrinal differences would vanish ; yea, all 
their reciprocal animosities would be dissipated, and the kingdom of the 
lord would be established on the earth" A. C, 1790. 

" All the members of the early church lived together as brethren, in 
mutual love. But in process of time love abated, and finally van- 
ished away ; and as love vanished evils grew, and with evils falsities, 
out of which came schisms and heresies. These would never have 
existed, if charity had continued to exist and rule ; for in that event 
men would not have called schism and heresy by those names, but 
would have regarded them as doctrines conformed to each person's 
particular way of thinking." A. C, 1834. 

" It is false to suppose that the man of the church is constituted, not 
by goodness or charity, but by truth or faith." A. G, 2351. « Faith, 
in the word, means nothing but love and charity ; hence doctrines and 
tenets of faith are not faith, but only appurtenances of it." 2116. 

" Love to the lord cannot possibly exist apart from neighborly love. 
For the lord's love is love to the whole human race, which he desires 
to save eternally, and to adjoin entirely to himself, so as for none of 
them to perish: wherefore whosoever has love to the lord, has the 
lord's love, and cannot help loving his neighbor." A. C, 2023. 

" When it is said there is no salvation in any name but that of the 
lord, it means no salvation in any other doctrine, that is, in no other 
thing than mutual love, which is the true doctrine of faith." A. C, 2009. 
" The lord is never present in external worship, unless internal wor- 
ship be contained in it." A. Q, 1150. "Many say, there is no in- 
ternal worship without external. They should say, no external with- 
out internal." A. C, 1175. "The new church will be established 
only in those who are in a life of good." A. C, 3898. « The church 
is necessarily various in doctrine, for one man or one society professes 
one opimon, another another. But as long as each lives in charity, he 
is in the church as to life, whatever he be as to doctrine." A. C, 3451. 
"The belief is very common, that to be received into heaven de- 
pends solely upon mercy; and that reception into heaven is the same 
thing as being admitted here to a house where a festivity is goin- on 
and partaking of it. But let persons thus instructed know that affec- 
tions are common in the spiritual world,"- just as appetite and passion 
are common to men in this world,- "man being there a spirit, and his 



APPENDIX. 217 

life being affection, out of which, and according to which, his thought 
comes forth ; and that homogeneous affection conjoins spirits, and 
heterogeneous affection disjoins them, so that heterogeneity makes a 
devil wretched in heaven, and an angel miserable in hell." A. R., 611. 

" The power to think rationally is not man's, but God's in him (dei 
apud ilium)." D. L. & W., 23. " The spiritual world is where man is, 
and not at all removed from him." Ditto, 92. 

"To walk in the light of the New Jerusalem, Rev. 21, 24, means 
to perceive divine truths from interior light, and to live a life in accord- 
ance with those truths." A. R., 920. And " to see truths from their 
own light is to see them " — not from any doctrinal teaching, but — 
" from one's interior mind, which is called the spiritual mind, and which 
is vivified by charity. When the mind is thus vivified or spiritualized, 
light, and the love of understanding truth, inflow out of heaven from 
the lord, and this influx constitutes spiritual illumination. He who is 
thus illumined, or has this interior love of truth, acknowledges truths as 
soon as he hears or reads them," i. e. without needing any argument 
or persuasion to convince him. A. R, 85. 

" It is not the eye which sees, but the spirit by the eye. This may 
be concluded also from dreams in which we sometimes see as in open 
day. But this is not all. The same thing is true of this interior sight, 
or that of the spirit. The spirit sees not from itself, but from a sight 
still more interior, which is that of the rational man ; nay, even this 
does not see of itself, but there is a sight still more interior, that of the 
internal man. Nor can we stop here. For neither does the internal 
man see of itself, but it is the lord, who, by means of the internal 
man, alone sees, because he alone lives, and he gives to man the faculty 
of seeing, and with it the appearance as if he saw himself." A. C, 
1954. " There is no such thing in creation as an independent, uncon- 
nected existence, nor could anything survive in that condition." A. C, 
2556. " No person whatever, be he man, spirit, or angel, can will and 
think from himself, but from others, nor can those others will and think 
from themselves, but these again from others, and so forth : thus each 
from the first source of life, who is the lord. What is unconnected 
has no existence." A. C, 2886. "It is false that life is implanted or 
inherent in man; it is always an influx." A. E., 82. 

" There is nothing general or universal, in itself, and apart from the 
particular or individual things which compose it, and give it name or 
quality. Hence it is plain that there is no universal providence of the 
lord possible, save as made up of individual providences, and it is 
stupid to insist upon such a thing." A. C, 4329. " Inasmuch as life, 
which is called intelligence and wisdom, is from the lord, it follows 



218 APPENDIX. 

also that life in common is from him, for the particular things of life 
which constitute its perfection, and are insinuated into the subject ac- 
cording to his faculty of reception, are all things pertaining to the com- 
mon life, which life is perfected in proportion as the evils into which 
man is born are removed from it." A. E., 349. 

" The eminent life, or excellency of life, of every member, every 
organ, and of all the viscera of our bodies, consists in this, that nothing 
is proper to any of them, unless it be common ; thus that in each thing 
there is the idea of a whole man. In man there is no member, nor 
any part in a member, which does not derive its necessaries, its nourish- 
ment, its delights, from what is common or general ; for in the body, 
what is common or general provides for particular things in proportion 
to their use. Whatsoever one member or organ requires for its work, 
it borrows from its neighbors, and this again from its neighbors, thus 
from the whole ; and it in like manner communicates or makes common 
to the rest its own, according to their want. The case is similar in the 
spiritual man, or heaven. Every one is there rewarded according to 
the excellence of his use, and at the same according to his love of use. 
No idle person is there tolerated, no slothful vagabond, no indolent 
boaster of the studies and labors of others, but every one is active, 
skilful, attentive, and diligent in his own office and business, and places 
honor and reward, not in the first, but in the second or third place. 
According to these dispositions, there is an influx among them of neces- 
sary, of useful, and of delightful things." (I quote from a charming 
little tract incorporated in the Apocalypse Explained, and entitled The 
Divine Love.) 

" As man becomes internal, and instructed in internal things, then 
externals are as nothing to him ; for he then knoivs what is sacred, 
namely, charity, and belief built upon charity. Wherefore, since the 
lord's advent, man is no longer estimated in reference to externals, but 
to internals." A. C, 1003. " External worship is in itself mere 
idolatry." A. C, 1094. 

" Whoso acts from charity is regenerate, and makes no account of 
the things of faith or truth, because he lives by virtue of the good of 
faith, and no longer by its truth ; for truth has so conjoined itself to 
good that it no longer appears as its form." A. C, 3122. " He who 
has arrived at spiritual good has no more need of doctrinals, which are 
from others, for he is in the end whither he was tending, and no longer 
in the means. And doctrinals are only means of arriving at good as 
the end." A. C, 5997. 

" The lord's spiritual church is dispersed over the whole globe, and is 
everywhere various according to creeds. So in the other world, no one 



APPENDIX. 219 

society, nor any one in a society, exactly agrees with another in ideas." 
A. C, 3267. " The spiritual church extends over the whole globe, as 
much among those who are without as among those who are with truths 
of faith." A. C, 3263. " As internal truths become seen, the external 
truths which shrouded them become dissipated, and serve only as means 
of thinking about internal ones." A. C, 3857. 

" Truth of itself cannot see whether it be truth, but must be en- 
lightened by good." A. C, 4256. 

" A holy internal life and a holy external one," such as ritualists 
cherish, "are altogether incompatible." A. C, 4293. 

" To know is not to believe. To believe is an internal thing, possible 
only to those who are in the love of the good and the true, that is, in 
charity towards others." A. C, 4319. 

" The man who is regenerating or becoming spiritual is first led by 
truth to good, because he does not know what spiritual good is but by 
truth, or doctrine drawn from scripture ; thus he is initiated into good. 
But when he is initiated, he is no longer led by truth to good, but by 
good to truth, for he then, from the good that is in his heart, not only 
sees the truths he had before known, but also from this good produces 
new truths, which he had not before known, nor could know. For good 
has along with it the property of desiring truths, being as it were 
nourished by them, inasmuch as it is perfected by them. These new 
truths greatly differ from those he had before known, these latter 
having had little of life, while the former are enlivened by good." 
A. C, 5804. 

" Before regeneration man acts from obedience, after from affection ; 
these two states are inversely related to each other, for in the former 
state truth rules, in the latter good. "When man is in the latter state, or 
acts from affection, it is no longer allowed him to do good from obedience 
merely, or from truth." A. C, 8505. " When man is led of the 
lord by good, and not from truth, he is then in charity, i. e. in the love 
of doing that good ; all in heaven are thus led, since this is to be in 
divine order, and thus all things which they think and do are thought 
and done spontaneously or from freedom. If they should think and act 
otherwise, that is, from truth, they would think whether a thing ought 
to be so done or not, and would thus hesitate in everything, and thereby 
so obscure the light pertaining to them, as to relapse into an unregen- 
erate condition." A. C, 8516. 

" When man is regenerate he no longer asks from truth " (or his 
understanding) " what he is to believe and do, but from good " (or his 
heart), " because he is imbued with truths and has them in himself, nor 
has he any concern about truths from any other source than his own 
good." A. C, 8772. 



220 APPENDIX. 

"The divine flowing in former times through heaven, was divine 
truth, represented by the law of Moses ; what is now transfluent there 
is good." A. C, 6720. 

" The good appertaining to man makes his heaven, so that every 
man's heaven is exactly what his good is." A. C, 9741. 

" Intelligence is to perceive inwardly in one's own mind whether a 
thing be true or not. To perceive from teaching is not to be intelligent, 
but only to know." A. E., 198. 

" The ancients did not hay faith but truth, whereas the moderns say 
faith instead of truth. The reason is that the former believed only 
what they saw to be true, or apprehended understanding^, and the 
moderns profess to believe, though they do not see nor understand. 
The angels in the superior heavens are not willing even to mention 
faith, for they see truth from the light of good, and call it madness to 
confide in any one saying that this or that ought to be believed without 
being apprehended in the understanding. The reason why truth ought 
to be named in the place of faith is, because by truths come all intel- 
ligence and wisdom, but by faith, especially by faith separated from 
these things, comes all our spiritual ignorance. This is why the higher 
angels turn themselves away when faith is named, having no sympathy 
with the thought of those who name it, which is that the understanding 
is to be held captive to the obedience of faith." A. E., 895. 



Note C. Page 92. 

The modern sentimental religionist will be shocked at my thus reviv- 
ing the faded lineaments of his mistress as she appeared in the dew of 
her youth and unconsciousness, when her service brought sorrow and 
desolation of spirit to every hearth that harbored her. But I have no 
disposition to apologize. I am not so presumptuous, indeed, as to quar- 
rel with the peculiar evolution of the religious sentiment which is so 
rife at this day ; for no doubt it is strictly appropriate to the existing 
needs of the human heart. I only quarrel with the pretension its 
votaries attribute to it, of being a comparatively pure exhibition of the 
sentiment, and protest against its being regarded as an absolute advance 
upon the earlier forms of religion. It is no doubt a providential modi- 
fication of the old religious conscience, to suit the demands of our 
comparatively superficial and frivolous spiritual life. But it is absurd, 
as it seems to me, to talk of it as an absolute improvement. Indeed, 
to every one studiously familiar with the early religious life of man, the 



APPENDIX. 221 

change in question is not from good to better, but only from bad to 
worse. Eeligion has undergone so sheer a demoralization since her 
pure and holy prime — has sunk into such a brazen handmaid to 
worldliness, such a painted and bedizened courtesan and street-walker, 
proffering her unstinted favors to every sentimental fop, or clerical beau 
diseur, who has the smallest change of self-conceit in his pocket where- 
with to pay for them — that one finds himself secretly invoking the 
advent of some grand social renovation in order to blot it as a profes- 
sion out of remembrance, and leave it extant only as a spiritual life. 
Eeligion was once a spiritual life in the earth, though a very rude and 
terrible one ; and her conquests were diligently authenticated by the 
divine spirit. Then she meant terror and amazement to all devout 
self-complacency in man ; then she meant rebuke and denial to every 
form of distinctively personal hope and pretension towards God ; then she 
meant discredit and death to every breath of a pharisaic or quaker 
temper in humanity, by which a man could be led to boast of a "private 
spirit " in his bosom, giving him a differential character and aspect in 
God's sight to that of other men, especially the great and holy and un- 
conscious mass of his kind. Swedenborg found hell made up of this 
oppressive sort of persons, men who claim to be righteous in themselves, 
and despise the divine or universal righteousness, which belongs to them 
only as they are in solidarity with their kind, only in other woi'ds as 
the sentiment of kind-ness, or charity, in their bosoms, sops up that 
of self. This is why the New Testament addresses no inviting or 
soothing word of any sort to the saint, but only to the sinner. In one 
of those very rare gospel incidents which give us a glimpse into Christ's 
personal temperament, a saintly youth presents himself so aglow with 
all moral excellence, that Christ cannot help testifying a natural im- 
pulse of affection towards him ; but he nevertheless straightway charges 
him to set no value upon his virtue as a celestial qualification. " If 
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor ; 
and come and follow me." No wonder we are told that when " the 
young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful ; for he had 
great possessions." For nothing could well be more preposterous than 
the recommendation of Christ, if we are to take his words strictly 
according to the letter, or regard them as devoid of an internal or 
spiritual and universal sense. Clearly no man was ever divinely 
authorized to make his private will the rule of my action, unless he 
were at the same time divinely qualified to prove his will identical with 
that of all mankind, or exalt it into a standard of universal justice. 
No, the letter of truth kills, the spirit alone gives life. Thus the " rich 
man " of the gospel, who finds it so hard to enter the kingdom of heaven, 



222 APPENDIX. 

is only figuratively the moneyed man, while in truth it is the " virtuous " 
man, or the man who in all moral regards is so favorably distinguished 
from other men as to feel himself meritoriously related by that fact to 
God also. The " possessions " of such a man are a hindrance rather 
than a help to his spiritual progress, because they induce a belief that 
the divine righteousness is of a base moral or personal type, and not 
of an exclusively spiritual or impersonal quality. 

One word more. Consider the lilies, said he who spake as no man 
before or since has ever spoken, consider the lilies, how they grow ; they 
toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Manifestly, if the subjec- 
tive or sensitive life of the lily — the life which allies it to the earth 
as the sole heaven of its nurture and growth — were the same thing 
with its objective or unconscious perfection, that is, with the beauty and 
fragrance which alone individualize it to our intelligence, the lesson 
here conveyed could have no applicability to us, would in fact forfeit its 
total significance to our understanding. For the whole point of the 
lesson is, to dissuade us, by the example of the lily, from those subjec- 
tive cares and anxieties to which we are naturally prone, in the con- 
fidence that all our real or objective needs will be infallibly supplied 
by the supreme care-taker. And if, therefore, the lily could be sup- 
posed to be subjectively conscious of its objective charms, or properly 
solicitous about the impression it produces upon higher natures, the 
lesson would read exactly backwards, and leave us less void of unwise 
anxiety than it found us. Clearly the lily offers no fit counsel to us, 
save in so far as negatively or by contrast it mirrors our inward worth- 
lessness. It is our spiritual habit to be forever seeking the argument 
of God's good-will to us, not in the infinitude of his love which rejects 
all worth in its objects, but in our own subjective states by which we 
are reasonably qualified for his favor. And this vicious habit the lily, 
by its subjective modesty or serene acquiescence in its native nothing- 
ness, eloquently rebukes. It is the exact christian ideal of life, on the 
other hand, that we should, even while undergoing an experience of our 
subjective infirmity or unworthiness, amounting to despair in ourselves, 
yet feel so assured a peace in God, and the constancy of his redeeming 
love and providence, as virtually transforms that despair into hope. 
And the lily by its formal or objective beauty, its exquisite unasking 
and unconscious grace and innocence, exactly reflects or foreshadows 
these priceless spiritual possibilities in us, and so preaches us, if only 
our ear is inwardly exercised to hear, a sermon far more evangelic 
than ever fell from the lips of learned Paul or politic Peter. 

Christ's originality — when he interpreted the divine law as mean- 



APPENDIX. 223 

ing in spirit love to God and love to man, or as being fulfilled in our 
doing to our neighbor as we would be done by — has been of late zeal- 
ously controverted ; some persons maintaining that his doctrine on this 
subject had been substantially, if not formally, anticipated by pagan 
sages, while others contend that he was without any rival. How the 
controversy actually stands I do not know. As a good deal of will 
energizes it on both sides, it is probable neither party to it is much 
affected by the arguments of the other. It seems to me, however, that 
if I were disposed to maintain Christ's absolute originality as a teacher, 
I should be able to find a much more inexpugnable ground for the 
claim, in the doctrine he laid down as to the temper of mind which 
qualified men for the kingdom of heaven, when he likened it to that of 
unconscious infancy. " Suffer little children," he said to his disciples, 
" suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not : for of such 
is the kingdom of heaven." That clearly was the first time in human 
annals that the soul of man found itself so level with the divine mind 
— attained to so clear an insight into the divine perfection — as 
livingly to perceive that poverty not wealth, innocence not virtue, 
ignorance not wisdom, was what alone truly qualified men for the 
divine sympathy. At that period the stoics were the leaders of spec- 
ulative thought. To fall back on all occasions upon one's moral force, 
and find a refuge against calamity in one's native strength of will, was 
the best recognized wisdom of man. Strength not weakness, knowledge 
not ignorance, virtue not innocence, was the shining panoply wherewith 
the stoic faith armed its votary against the slings and arrows of out- 
rageous fortune. Christ probably had never heard of the stoics, but 
if he had he could only have been revolted by their doctrine, since his 
own was the exact and total inversion of theirs. The ideal of the stoic 
was rich and cultivated manhood. The ideal of Christ was innocent 
unconscious childhood. According to Christ what men need in order 
to the full enjoyment of the divine favor is, to be emptied of all 
personal pretension, to become indifferent to all self-seeking or self- 
providence, and to present to the divine hand the same unaffected 
submission which the child exhibits to the parent. Thus weakness 
not strength, ignorance not knowledge, impotence not faculty, affec- 
tion not intellect, innocence not virtue, heart not head, want not 
wealth, was what, in his estimation, qualifies men for the skies. And 
his conviction on the subject, for which also he laid down his life, was 
so strictly original, that is, it was so little shared by other men, as to 
have awakened almost no echo up to this day in the bosom of the race, 
and to have found itself ratified, at most, only by some rare individual 
experiences here and there throughout history. 



224 APPENDIX. 



Note D. Page 99. 

Surely I adore and bless God with all my heart that he has suc- 
ceeded in putting the scampish or diabolic element in our nature 
upon the side of public order ; that he has so secularized religion, and 
so popularized government, that whatsoever is basest in our common 
life tends irresistibly to the highest places, rises spontaneously to the 
surface like scum or froth, and passes off harmlessly, nay benignantly, 
in offices of public dignity and use. At least it will be made so to pass 
off as soon as our owlish vision becomes enlarged to the celestial day- 
light which is visiting us from on high, and our clownish hearts grow 
devout enough to acknowledge that evil is a far more vivacious ser- 
vitor of God, because an interested one, than good has ever been. The 
good man indeed, if his spiritual intelligence has also been quickened, 
altogether disowns the divine service, in any strict sense of that word. 
His hearty reverence for God disposes him to a wholly filial recog- 
nition of him, and makes him loathe nothing so much as the magisterial 
conception of the divine name. I suppose the profoundest anguish a 
really believing mind suffers grows out of the inveterate servility it 
feels to be imposed upon it by the prevalent thought of God in the 
church and the world. I cannot imagine, indeed, that the peace of any 
such mind will ever be perfect, until the divine existence itself ceases 
to be a tradition of the dead memory, by becoming reproduced in the 
actual life of its senses. 

But all this does not hinder me seeing, on the contrary it insures 
my seeing, how illusory all our private pretension to virtue is, and 
how preposterous our hope of arriving at true manhood individually, 
except upon a basis of the amplest preliminary justice to all men. Give 
all mankind relief from abject physical and moral want, by insuring 
them subsistence and education, and you give them ipso facto social 
recognition ; and when society is at last established among men, then 
for the first time a true, because a really free or spiritual, individuality 
will be possible. When divine justice or righteousness is universally 
done upon the earth, or what is the same thing, when every man's 
natural fellowship or equality with all other men becomes practically 
organized, then those of us who choose may reasonably aspire to unin- 
cumbered spiritual possessions; but as long as every man's soul is 
mortgaged as now to his suffering brethren, it is hopeless and indeed 
iniquitous to expect any true spiritual freedom. 



APPENDIX. 225 



Note E. Page 120. 



I see no reason why the man of science should not run us phys- 
ically — run all he can find of physical substance in us — into the 
most abject mineral maternity. And it seems a pity that less logical 
men of science should waste their energy in vain efforts to stop him off, 
under the impression that he is doing harm to men's spiritual interests. 
For after all this is got through with, after we have been scientifically 
disposed of and done for to all the extent of our animal, vegetable, and 
mineral properties, absolutely nothing at all has been done to account 
for our distinctive natural existence or phenomenality. And this be- 
cause human nature, unlike mineral, vegetable, and animal nature, is 
not physical, but moral or metaphysical. That is to say, its specific or 
free element is one with its generic element, and not servile to it, as is 
the case with those lower natures. No doubt I have all manner of 
physical properties, but none of these things is what makes me man, or 
constitutes me a subject of human nature. If I were to embody in my 
own person every perfection of the lower natural forms, I should not be 
so much more, but only so much less, a man. You would be obliged 
to eliminate all these adventitious quantities, before you would get at 
me, at my true human quality, which does not fall within the realm 
of science or reflex observation, but exclusively within that of conscience 
or living experience. 

Understand me. My morality, or personal quality, the sentiment I 
have of a selfhood or freedom over and above my appetites and pas- 
sions, is what I possess most strictly in common with all men, and is 
what alone makes me man, makes me a partaker of human nature. At 
first, no doubt, and for a good while, I am apt practically to identify 
myself with my appetites and passions, and if it were not for the control 
exerted at this period over my action by the public conscience, my 
manhood would be swallowed up of sheer animality. But my parents 
and guardians, or the other organized educative force of the community, 
stand between me and this disastrous issue, by substituting their man- 
hood for mine, until such time as I myself may attain to moral con- 
sciousness. They lend me their cultivated moral force (while mine is 
still dormant) as so much capital whereupon to work out my future 
independence, by making their will instead of my own appear to my 
imagination the proper law of my action. They educate my manhood, 
or moral consciousness, by leading me to stigmatize myself as an evil 
person, and submit to disgrace, whenever I abandon myself to my 
animal propensions unreservedly ; and to recognize myself as a good 



226 APPENDIX. 

person, entitled to honor, whenever I restrain them within certain con- 
ventional bounds. But they only educate my manhood ; they by no means 
confer or create it. Manhood or moral force is latent in my animal 
nature, just as the statue is latent in the marble ; and what conscience 
(which in its cruder forms is religion, or the law) does for me is 
to make it patent, or bring it to consciousness in me, by eliminating to 
my experience all that is purely animal from it; just as the sculptor 
brings forth the statue by carefully eliminating from it whatsoever in 
the marble is pure material, and will not lend itself to ideal form. The 
sculptor does not create the statue ; he only educates it, or leads it 
forth, out of the obdurate marble into visible form ; and he. does this 
by resolutely rejecting or wasting whatsoever in the substance re- 
fuses to become form. So the divine artist, in bringing us to moral 
consciousness, bestows no objective or real being upon us, but only sub- 
jective form, or the appearance of being; and he does this only by 
resolutely using up and casting out whatsoever in our animal substance 
insists upon remaining animal, or refuses to take on moral form. If 
there were not a moral force or force of manhood within all mineral, 
vegetable, and animal existence, ready to be divinely educated or brought 
forth in conscious form, all the administrative wisdom of church and 
state would be thrown away upon me, as upon the tiger or the sheep. 
Who thinks of educating the tiger or the sheep ? And why not ? 
Simply because they are naturally not men ; i. e. because their nature 
is simple not composite, physical not moral, and hence deprives them 
of conscience, or the knowledge of good and evil. The tiger or the 
sheep is not, like man, " created male and female " ; that is to say, 
they have science but not conscience, being " created each after its 
kind," and having no power like man to rise above or fall below that 
kind. But man is created male and female ; that is, both physical and 
moral, common and proper, public and private, bond and free. Thus 
he alone has conscience, or the knowledge of himself as by nature 
both chaotic and cosmical, both civic and domestic, both universal and 
particular, both generic and specific, both good and evil, both sheep 
and tiger, or the harmony of all nature's contrasts, and hence the anal- 
ogon of all God's perfection. 

And if all this is true — if it be true that my morality is exclusively 
a natural mark in me, and does not give me my spiritual individuality or 
difference from my brother man, but only a more perfect identity with 
him, in giving me at the same time an inextinguishable diversity from 
all that is not him — then doubtless it interests, but it does not' alarm 
me, to hear that Messrs. Vogt and Moleschott and Biichner and 
Huxley, and all the other en/cms terribles of science who furnish our 



APPENDIX. 227 

newspaper palate with so much pungent provocation nowadays, have 
serious thoughts of revolutionizing our faith, and making us believe 
downwards henceforth instead of upwards. Is any one really in dread 
of science ? Science has but one legitimate function, which is obediently 
to reflect what exists, by no means to conduct or govern it. Can any one 
imagine a world more utterly farcical than one administered on scien- 
tific principles ; i. e. on principles approved by Messrs. Huxley, Vogt, and 
the rest ? And can anybody suppose that God almighty has at last 
grown ashamed of having so long misconducted his own business, and 
is going to transfer it to the savans ? To the guidance of human 
science ?. What sort of a figure would my reader come shortly to 
cut, if, instead of actively attending to his affairs, he should content 
himself with standing all clay before his mirror, and sinking his real 
personality in his reflected one ? Well, the world would instantly grow 
just as idiotic, if it could once disown its living inspiration and put up 
with a scientific one. For science knows and can know nothing of what 
life is in itself, but only in its effects. It knows and can know absolutely 
nothing of what life is inwardly or consciously, but only of the outward 
masks or appearances under which it is unconsciously revealed ; just as 
your mirror knows nothing and can tell nothing of your morale, or living 
personality, but only of your physique, or dead one. Life is shut up to the 
realm of consciousness, the moral or metaphysical realm, in which infinite 
and finite, God and man, are still inorganically blent or chaotically con- 
founded. But science has to do at most only with the physical realm, 
the realm of body or substance, where finite is seen divorcing itself 
from infinite, and life is held hopelessly captive to mere existence, 
which is death. 

Accordingly when the man of science puts his stout tongue in his 
cheek to deride my old-time beliefs about man's strictly supernatural — 
i. e. divine or spiritual — origin and destiny, he only succeeds, not in 
dashing my lawful jocundity even for a moment, but in stimulating me 
to make a more modest use of my own tongue, by wagging it freely 
to the following effect : — 

" Undoubtedly, excellent observer, the realm of physics in its 
entirety belongs to us, how little soever we belong to it. It is indis- 
solubly bound up in our morale, just as the marble is bound up in the 
statue, or the organ in its function ; and there is consequently no stone 
so indolent or callous, no fungus so malignant, no ape so unclean, as 
not to furnish an apt type of our Regenerate natural possibilities. But 
only a type. For the physical realm no way wvolves the moral, but 
only evolves it, or excludes it from itself; just as the marble evolves 
the statue or excludes it from itself, the organ the function, the mother 



228 APPENDIX. 

the child. And the very oldest of those old faiths which you now in- 
nocently because ignorantly despise, was yet beforehand with you in 
signalizing this natural sovereignty or comprehensiveness of man with 
respect to all lower natures, inasmuch as it was accustomed to assign to 
moral existence or human nature infernal no less than celestial ca- 
pacities ; that is, a -power of exceeding the brute himself in brutality, 
simply by sinking man in animal, or wedding sagacious personality to 
blind instinct. 

" But observe that all this is degeneracy in man, or man falling short 
of his nature ; and you, as a man of scientific probity, are bound, if you 
signalize the fact at all, to signalize it in that striking light. Naturally 
man is not a polliwog nor a baboon ; because the moment he touches 
these latitudes, we perceive that he does so only by deserting or fall- 
ing below his own natural level. What I insist, therefore, upon your 
doing is either to account, upon scientific principles, for this natural 
level in man being pitched so much higher than that of all other exist- 
ence, as to make it obvious degeneracy in him to remind you of polli- 
wog or baboon, or else, incontinently to take your lubberly tongue out 
of your cheek, and so restore your countenance to its wonted amiable 
proportions." 

The short of the matter is, why does man require to Regenerate into 
catamount or peacock, unless his nature be not theirs ? And if his 
nature be literally not theirs, what philosophic use does it serve to 
show, by a laborious parade of their organized structural and physio- 
logical affinities, that theirs nevertheless is his ? This, no doubt, is 
praiseworthy science. But science is not philosophy any more than it is 
religion. If science could only prove to us either that ape can become 
man by simple education, i. e. without natural regeneration, or rising 
above his own nature, or that man can become ape without natural 
Regeneration, i. e. without falling below his own nature and becoming 
diabolic, then science would put forth a just philosophic pretension, 
and might shed some light upon the obscurities of our origin and 
destiny. But so long as it is obliged plumply to deny both of these 
possibilities, of what conceivable philosophic significance are all the 
pedantic ostentatious disputes with which it contrives to give temporary 
eclat to certain rival ambitions ? 



APPENDIX. 229 



Note F. Page 149. . 

This Adam and Eve legend is only a gracious allegory, invented to 
set forth, in exquisite symbols, the invincible blindness in spiritual things 
which besets our natural intelligence. As a rule mankind never suspects 
that " great men," as they are called, are the outcome of its own womb 
exclusively, abject harbingers of its own infinite though still unrecog- 
nized wealth of being, but always ascribes to them an independent or 
outside and exceptional divine significance. It devoutly styles them 
" providential " men, i. e. men divinely contrived to meet a certain 
exigency in human affairs, and hence is sure to deem them much above, 
certainly never below, the average of human nature. Sense never so 
much as dreams that selfhood, personality, character, is but the badge 
of our common humanity ; and indeed it would be utterly disconcerted 
if taught to regard its more vivid manifestations as only so many 
foretokenings of the race's future possibilities. On the contrary, it 
always concedes a certain absoluteness or infinitude to great character, 
a certain prestige of preter- if not super-naturalness, which more 
than anything else retards its own elevation and condemns it to grovel. 
In short, the moral pretension in humanity — that natural sense of 
egotism, or un-kind-ness, which makes every man deem himself to be 
something in himself, and apart from his kind or nature — habitually 
arrogates to itself a direct or special divine sanction, habitually prefers 
specific or class interests to generic or universal ones, habitually disci- 
plines its subject to urge his private claim to the divine consideration, in 
utter indifference, if needs be, to the ineffable woes and wants of the race. 

Carlyle is the boisterous elegist or apologist of this — once crazy 
and conceited, but now simply effete — faith ; its self-elected Old 
Mortality, who ever and anon sets himself to furbishing up its martyr- 
ology with such a cheerful and profligate contempt for the facts of 
history, that the world would simply stand aghast, and refuse to applaud 
the preposterous performance, did it not always discern the inveterate 
and unconscious comedian in the frowning mask of the moralist. Better 
than any of our amateur Jeremiahs, Carlyle succeeds in reproducing 
the flashy but cheap and fallacious conception of man which underlies 
our old civilization, and is fast hastening its extinction. He has become 
at last almost the only mouthpiece of that stubborn and vulgar pagan- 
ism of the heart, which identifies God with the vir primarily and the 
homo secondarily ; with our conscious rather than our unconscious per- 
sonality ; with the lively and muddled but picturesque shows of things, 
rather than their deep, serene, unostentatious reality. In a word, 



230 APPENDIX. 

civilization, not society, is Carlyle's ideal of our eternal destiny ; the 
enforced relation of governed to governor, of an imbecile quantiiied 
mass to a qualified minority, and not the frank and free commerce of 
universal fellow and equal with individual fellow and equal. His 
scheme of individual destiny is proportionate. The individual is to re- 
main a distinctly moral or voluntary force, and will never attain to aes- 
thetic or spontaneous dimensions. This fact — let Carlyle continue to 
ululate as pharisaically as he will — stamps him antediluvian ; a very 
wilful and wicked antediluvian I admit, because he is a sheerly dramatic 
one : his books being little more than a jocund unconscious harlequinade, 
in the costume and coloring of our own time, of the old scotch calvin- 
istic cant, now grown rococo and fantastic, and therefore artistically 
available. But he is at least so very close an imitation of the original arti- 
cle as to be out of all relation to the living intellect and living interests 
of men. 

It is profaning Emerson's chaste and reverent muse to associate it, 
even in thought, with the ignis fatuus, or imp of the bogs, that inspires 
Carlyle's grim and labored facetiae. But even Emerson, who is so 
sympathetic with all that is pure and honest and unostentatious in 
human life, even he is much too apt to confound the children of the 
bondmaid, born after the flesh, with those of the free worn an, born 
altogether of divine promise. Nevertheless, what saith the scripture? 
Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall 
not be heir with the son of the freewoman. The gravamen of Mr. 
Emerson's criticism of Swedenborg, as it strikes me, is, after all, that 
he is not a spiritual Montaigne ; or that in the gossip he gives us about 
Cicero and Aristotle he drops out the native flavor of those worthies, 
and substitutes a regenerate one. But this is being too fastidious. For 
plainly, if these men are, as Swedenborg holds, the respectable men 
they are in point of spiritual stature, because they are more and not 
less inspired by the common life of man than it falls to every one's 
lot to be, were it not better for us to hear of their having made that 
grand discovery, and demeaning themselves accordingly, than to find 
them turning out mere immortal mummies, so bent upon keeping up 
their stale and vapid natural identity as to forego all hope of attaining 
to a true spiritual individuality? To be sure, if the principle of force 
or identity in Cicero and Aristotle were more potent than that of in- 
dividuality or freedom, so that these men were really something in 
themselves, and not as they stood objectively affected to the common 
mind, then, of course, Swedenborg was an ass for showing them stripped 
of their personal prestige, and consenting to sink their fate in that of 
the ordinary riffraff of mankind. But I have no belief in that hypoth- 



APPENDIX. 231 

esis, and I would not exchange the perspicacious Swedenborg, accord- 
ingly, against a shipload of gossiping Montaignes. Nothing has 
grown so inwardly false to me as this superstition of a distinctive 
private or personal worth in men. I am sure that if I shall ever 
have the chance offered me to see any most distinguished man I please 
in the annals of the race, I shall gladly pretermit every one who 
has ever been noted for genius, or virtue, or wit, or mere gift of any 
kind, and fasten inexorably upon the interesting person of whom nothing 
whatever is known, not even his name, but that "he was tired of hear- 
ing Aristides called the just." That man, I am not ashamed to own, chal- 
lenges a perennial freshness to my imagination, which lifts him " above 
all Greek, above all Eoman fame." " What constitutes," says Sweden- 
borg, " the eminency or excellence of life in every member, organ, and 
viscus of the body, is that nothing is proper to any of them imless it 
he common : thus that in every particular thing is contained the idea of 
the whole." * But this is infinitely more true, so to speak, of life in its 
spiritual aspect, or in the social body. For in the social evolution of 
humanity, — which is the lord's second or spiritual advent, — no in- 
dividuality will ever get itself honored, or even recognized, which does 
not more or less universalize the subject, by enfeebling his moral or 
subjective consciousness and inflaming his aesthetic or objective one. 

And here let me say one word more to the address of any one whom 
it may concern. 

I have shown in the preceding essay that, whereas morality is com- 
monly reputed to be an attribute of our specific manhood, identifying 
every man with himself alone, and individualizing him both from God 
and his kind, it is in truth an attribute of human nature exclusively, 
identifying every man therefore with every other man, while it indi- 
vidualizes or separates him from God on the one hand, and the brute on 
the other. We suppose it to characterize man spiritually, or in so far 
forth as he is inwardly at one with God and himself; whereas it 

* See the beautiful little treatise on the Divine Love at the end of the Apocalypse 
Explained. " They who belonged," says Swedenborg, Arcana, 1115, "to the most 
ancient church, called Man or Adam, are above the head in the Maximus Homo, 
. and dwell together in the utmost happiness. They told me that others came to 
them very seldom, except at times some who do not come from this earth, but, as 
they expressed it, from the universe." Delicious people ! And what a ravishing 
glimpse is here caught of the soul's future possibilities, if one will only stand faith- 
fully by the soul, and not give up the tradition of such a thing out of deference to 
the grovelling senses ! Should any traveller tell us of a tribe so profoundly human, 
or largely impersonal as this, dwelling in the heart of Asia or Africa, what could 
hinder us making off to them at once 1 But Swedenborg's books teem with 
similar incitements to cultivated hope and expectation. 



232 APPENDIX. 

characterizes him only naturally, or in so far as he is inwardly at war 
with all higher and all lower things. In short I have shown that while 
morality endows man with a subjective or phenomenal consciousness, 
with a quasi or provisional selfhood, adapted to the needs of an imma- 
ture society among men, there is not the least spiritual or living truth, 
the least objective reality, in this selfhood : the whole spiritual import 
of it being to foreshadow the divine natural humanity, or furnish a 
literal form, a symbolic or figurative expression, to the utterly unsus- 
pected truth of God's essential and exclusive manhood* and I have 
also shown that Christianity expresses the cordial and intimate, but un- 
suspected, union which binds together these divided spheres ; the sphere 
of our real or objective being, and that of our phenomenal or subjective 
existence. It reports, in fact, such a strict relation of cause and effect, 
of substance and shadow, subsisting between the spiritual and natural 
worlds, as that the highest, most interior, and incommunicable secrets 
of creative order stand faithfully, though of course inversely, imaged 
in every familiar feature of created experience. 

Now if all these things be true — i. e. the finiting force I have as- 
signed to morality on the one hand, and the infiniting force I have 
assigned to Christianity on the other — then it seems to me evident 
that we have an a priori right to expect, nay, to demand, some critical 
moment in the race's progress, in which these contrasted movements 
shall actually concur, and vibrate thenceforward in unison ; some me- 
ridian hour which shall lick up the shadow in the substance, or marry 
thenceforth whatsoever is most phenomenal in human experience with 
whatsoever is most real; some pivotal life or personality, in short, 
which shall bring the ritual or representative church to an end, by 
revealing the infinite divine substance which has hitherto been hid in 
finite human form, and stamping God and man thenceforth indissolubly 
one. I say, that these our intellectual data being true, we have an in- 
contestable logical right to demand this historic achievement, and to 
demand it moreover in duplex historic form : i. e. first, in literal, nega- 
tive, or obscure form, answering to our natural or superstitious concep- 
tion of God as a finite, or moral and personal being, having interests 
essentially at variance with those of the vast mass of mankind; second, 
in spiritual, positive, or glorified form, answering to our regenerate or 
cultivated conception of God as an infinite or essentially social and im- 
personal being, all whose interests are identical with those of the vilest 
worm that crawls, and whose providence extends to every insensate 

* Human nature, in its enforced subjection to animal, vegetable, and mineral, is 
a literal type or shadow of the subjection which the divine nature is obliged to 
undergo to the human, in the process of man's spiritual creation and redemption. 



APPENDIX. 233 

stone that rests in its place or rolls. The plenary revelation of the 
creative name, which was intended by the church, is manifestly contin- 
gent upon this duplex historic issue. For the church in literal form 
(the Jewish type) supplies at best but a negative witness of God in the 
earth, inasmuch as it shows the woman in our nature under law to 
the man, the vir subject to the homo, freedom prostrate to force, the in- 
dividual life utterly servile to the common life ; whereas in true or 
spiritual order (the christian type) the individual element, or what the 
subject is in relation to the infinite, is primaiy and commanding, while 
the universal element, or what the subject is in relation to the finite, is 
altogether secondary and subservient. 

Well, what Swedenborg's books practically teach us is, that this last 
decisive hour of destiny has actually sounded, and that it is big with in- 
calculable issues both to the race and the individual. His doctrine of 
God's natural manhood shows us this grand pivotal life or personality 
in man, becoming at last enthroned to our rational recognition, in the 
truth of the broadest human society, fellowship, or equality of man with 
man upon the earth. Can I not then persuade some fresher sinews 
than mine to enlist in the study of Swedenborg where I leave off, and 
patiently run the principles he announces of God's spiritual administra- 
tion into every detailed natural application demanded by men's enlarg- 
ing faith and hope ? It is of course easy, with our sensuous and child- 
ish preconceptions of the divine majesty, to slight the prodigious suc- 
cor and expansion which Swedenborg's books bring to our husk-fed 
and famished intellect. But no one, it seems to me, ought ever to 
open Swedenborg's writings, whose heart and whose head have not 
been sufficiently revolted both by the awful horrors of our existing 
civilization, and the merciless complacent moralism of our religious and 
literary teachers, to endow him with some original and independent in- 
sight. I have no fear that any person whose heart, especially, has 
ever been frankly exercised upon any problem of human origin or des- 
tiny, will long be disappointed in Swedenborg's lore. I would counsel 
every such person, to begin with, to dismiss all he has ever heard of 
the author himself, either from reputed friend or foe, and insist simply 
upon ascertaining for himself what is meant by his doctrine of the 
lord, or the divine natural humanity ; for there is absolutely nothing 
worth discovering in Swedenborg, which does not plainly owe all its 
attraction to that commanding truth. And in order perfectly to grasp 
this truth, let him start in all his investigations from the axiom which, 
however poorly, I have endeavored in the text to illustrate to his im- 
agination, namely, that creation is made up to the creature's experience 
of three successive stages, one primary or essential, another mediatory 



234 APPENDIX. 

or existential, and a third the conjoint issue of these two, which is final 
or characteristic : the first stage constituting a centrifugal movement, 
determined by the need the creature is under to be subjectively pro- 
nounced or made self-conscious ; the second a centripetal movement, 
determined by his objective or spiritual reaction upon himself, or the 
need he feels himself under to be reunited to his creative source; and 
the third a strictly orbitual movement, presenting the cordial synthesis 
or living fusion of these two, and full consequently, itself, of immortal 
peace and power. In other words, let him diligently remember that 
creation wears first of all a mask of necessity — i. e. of fatality, sav- 
agery, or poverty — constituted by the enforced humiliation of creative 
substance to created form ; by the compression of the homo to the com- 
pass of the vir ; by the subjugation of the wide weltering chaos of 
mineral, vegetable, and animal existence to the dimensions of the cos- 
mos which is man's compact city or home ; by the reduction in short of 
man's physical or unconscious being to the measure and pattern of his 
moral or personal consciousness : and subsequently to that, a free, con- 
tingent, cultivated, and affluent appearance, constituted by the creature's 
reaction towards the creator, or the "desire" of the woman to the man, 
of the vir to the homo : and then finally a harmonic, peaceful, sab- 
batical aspect, constituted by the marriage of these opposing move- 
ments, or, what is the same thing, by the conversion of man's natural 
or subjective force into a spiritual or objective one, which means his 
redemption out of a loose or profligate natural selfhood into a chaste 
regenerate one, out of fierce physical want and squalor into social plenty 
and refinement, and therefore out of a petty moral and finite form of 
consciousness, into a grandly aesthetic and infinite one. 



Note G. Page 183. 

I am prone, on occasion, to bear falsewitness, to steal, to commit 
adultery and murder ; and the world thereupon argues that I am 
inwardly or spiritually as depraved as these actions report me to be, 
and so forthwith consigns me to the devil, that is, to the jailer or hang- 
man. In other words, it looks upon my doing as determined by my 
previous being, and hence feels itself authorized to stamp this injurious 
being out. But this judgment is childish, and the action based upon it 
both frivolous and cruel. Doubtless my inherited physical and moral 
temperament inclines me to do these odious things, whenever I can do 
them unobserved ; but my inherited temperament is what I am only in 



APPENDIX. 235 

the intensest solidarity with my kind, or through that, with all animal, 
all vegetable, and all mineral existence, and before I have attained to 
distinctively divine, which is individual, or spiritual, form. What I am 
in common with all moral and all physical existence leaves me void of 
spiritual quality, leaves me a form of sheer passivity to the instreaming 
creative force of things, and hence of mere boundless or unconscious 
cupidity. And what conscience, or the voice of God in my bosom, 
does for me in forbidding me to bear falsewitness, or to do any other 
evil thing, is simply to divinize or spiritualize my consciousness, by 
arresting this overwhelming passivity to my experience, or identifying 
it no longer with myself, but exclusively with my inherited nature. 
When conscience forbids me to do evil, it virtually says to me : " Human 
nature is inwardly or spiritually enfranchised, i. e. is separated from all 
lower natures, in being a divine habitation. But man (the vir) is alto- 
gether unconscious of this fact, being under dominion exclusively to his 
animal, vegetable, and mineral consciousness (the homo) ; so that unless 
he were made vividly to feel the death he bears in himself, in his own 
body, he would never be able to renounce his natural genesis, and aspire 
to a divine or spiritual renewing. And this wilting or withering effect 
upon consciousness it is my exclusive office to mediate. Thus in for- 
bidding you and all men as I do to steal, to bear falsewitness, to com- 
mit adultery and murder, and to covet each other's possessions, I make 
you each conscious of a power of being or suffering infinitely transcend- 
ing your power of doing or enjoying ; and this power it is which alone 
allies you with God. I make you aware, in other words, of a freedom 
or selfhood so completely inward, so wholly your own, as palpably to 
disclaim any finite origin, or avouch itself a strictly spiritual presence 
in your nature, connecting it with the skies." 

Evidently, then, whenever I do evil, whenever I bear falsewitness, 
and so forth, I do so, not by virtue of any characteristic quality in me, 
any quality pertaining to me as a spiritual or cultivated existence, but 
only by virtue of an unexhausted remainder of that primal and strictly 
communistic force which belongs to me as a physical and moral existence, 
and which contrives still to overlap and disfigure my spiritual manhood. 
My inheritance and my cultivation, my temperament and my character, 
are two very distinct interests, which moreover never bear a direct but 
always an inverse relation to each other. If I inherit bad dispositions, 
as every one must do to some extent who is born of the flesh, and is 
not destined to remain a spiritual bat to all eternity, these dispositions 
must come to the surface of action, that I may see them in their true 
light, and by inwardly loathing them, and outwardly averting myself 
from them, may attain at last to the free or spiritual individuality for 



236 APPENDIX. 

which I am created in the lord. The civil power is of course utterly 
indifferent to this necessity, and may therefore degrade, or imprison, or 
kill me at its pleasure, for it is the steward of God in the earth, and 
all power is committed to it. But it is an essentially corrupt or unjust 
steward, and it will never conciliate the divine approbation consequently, 
until it consents to assume its own proper share of the responsibility 
due to society for our existing crime and vice, by calling every one of 
its lord's debtors to it and saying to the first, How much owest thou 
unto my lord? An hundred measures of oil? Take thy bill, and sit 
down quickly, and write fifty; and so on to the end of the list. No 
disinterested student of Swedenborg can help perceiving that our moral 
force is just as truly organic as our physical one, being utterly con- 
tingent upon the relations we are under to the world of spirits, by virtue 
of our existing civic and ecclesiastical organization. And if this is the 
case, how exquisitely absurd it is to go on confounding a man's spiritual 
and moral character, or attributing the good and evil, which belong 
exclusively to his nature or inheritance, to himself, that is, to his char- 
acter or culture ! We have, according to Swedenborg, absolutely no 
freedom or selfhood, either physical or moral, "as selfhood is commonly 
conceived," but only the appearance of such a thing, inasmuch as all 
our power, sensational and emotional, all our appetite and passion, all 
our affection and thought, all our will and understanding, are an influx 
to us every moment from spiritual association, giving us each a quasi 
individuality indeed, or a reality to his own consciousness, but restrict- 
ing the entire truth of the phenomenon to his unconscious solidarity 
with all other men. How imperative then the obligation upon our 
existing divine stewardship, whether it call itself church or state, or 
both, instantly to legitimate all mankind, good and evil, white and black, 
rich and poor alike, or give every man of woman born equal social 
recognition, by frankly assuming to itself all the merit and demerit of 
their physical and moral diversities. No doubt if the steward could 
only be got to feel his iniquity in the premises, and do at last what 
divine justice stringently demands of him, he would find men glad 
enough to receive him into their houses, when he is definitively put out 
of his stewardship. That is to say, when once human society is fairly 
inaugurated, by every man becoming endowed with an equal interest 
in it, then every man will be a law unto himself, and will spiritually 
execute justice and judgment upon himself, whenever he thinks a 
thought, or feels a desire, of inequality with respect to the meanest 
man that lives. 

The same error vitiates all our aesthetic judgments. We invariably 
confound the man and the artist, the substance and the form, the subject 



APPENDIX. 237 

and the object, and hold with Horace that the poet is what he is ab- 
solutely, i. e. by possession or inheritance, and not contigently, i. e. 
by doing and suffering. I have a friend, an estimable man enough 
in all personal respects, who has a great deal of artistic ambition 
without a gleam of artistic ability. He covers any amount of can- 
vas during the year, as if only to demonstrate that the ambition to 
excel in any pursuit is always in the inverse ratio of the corresponding 
power. " I have it in me, however," he cries aloud every year with 
new emphasis, " and by heaven it shall come out." His friends, alarmed 
at this unprincipled perseverance, remonstrate with him to this effect : 
People who have it in them, as you say, are never tempted to swear by 
heaven, or by anything else, that it shall come out ; for it comes out as 
infallibly as the small-pox, and always leaves them a mortifying spec- 
tacle to themselves ever' after, so fatal is the eruption apt to prove to 
their previous self-conceit, or conception of their own power. The man 
who starts from a lively conviction of his own genius will probably 
never succeed in impressing anybody else with a similar conviction. 
Our current magazine literature, which in great part is a mere flatulent 
appreciation of distinguished names, has misled you. It has at all 
events helped if not prompted you to construe your love of fame into 
genius. You have been wilfully bent all these long years upon proving 
yourself a painter. But no painter worth naming thinks of vindicating 
himself in his picture, but only what is infinitely distinct and aloof from 
himself. No painter, whose soul is docile to the inspiration of art, ever 
dreams that it is the painter who begets the picture, but is sure rather 
that the picture begets the painter. The poet does not pretend to make 
his poem, unless he is a fop to begin with ; the poem it is that with in- 
finite maternal ado makes him, educates him out of his puerile vanity, 
and nurses him up at last into poetic faculty. Painter and picture, 
poet and poem, are rigidly correlated, or exist only by each other's 
permission, like subject and object. But it ought to be rooted in your 
conviction that the objective element in existence or action is alone 
real, while the subjective element is altogether phenomenal. Shake- 
speare's dramas were infinitely beyond Shakespeare himself, infinitely 
beyond his own power to produce. How otherwise should Shakespeare 
himself have so completely faded in all subjective or personal regards out 
of men's memory ? He is even getting to be looked upon as a myth- 
ologic personage. No one from knowing the man Shakespeare all his 
days could form the least prognostic of his poetic genius, least of all 
Shakespeare himself. No man is a hero to his friends, unless his friends 
start with a low conception of the heroic quality. The moral of it all 
is, dear friend, that art is a literally divine life in man, and that the 



238 APPENDIX. 

artist himself contributes absolutely nothing to it, but is in all cases its 
unlimited servant, a beggarly dependant upon its sovereign mercy ; a 
veritable Lazarus in fact sitting at its gate covered with the sores of 
his own peccant vanity, and asking to be fed of the crumbs that fall from 
its table. 



Note H. Page 191. 

No doubt the literal supernatural deserves the intellectual discredit 
which is fast overtaking it ; that technical supernatural which postulates 
nature's original objectivity to God, only for the purpose of alleging a 
posthumous subjective conflict between them. Our knowledge, properly 
so called, is limited to natural existence, or the field of the senses ; and 
however devoutly, therefore, we may believe in supernatural existence, 
it is evident that it can never fall within the compass of our proper 
knowledge, save in the light of a revelation ; since its pretension to do 
so would amount to the destruction of our natural faculty of knowing. 
If the supernatural can become known to us in an outward or sensible 
way, as we know natural things, then of course all our knowledge — 
which proceeds only upon the distinction of things — grows instantly 
unfixed or uncertain, and the natural world no longer serving as a firm 
and discrete base to the spiritual, turns out a bottomless morass, which 
forever swamps its heavenly promise and possibilities out of sight. The 
most flat-footed and flat-headed materialism of the day, such as that of 
Carl Vogt and Moleschott and Biichner, is preferable in this state 
of things, as it appears to me, to our old and fossil supernaturalism, just 
as the melting of the snows in spring, and the breaking up of the ice in 
our lakes and rivers, though oftentimes full of damage to private inter- 
ests, constitute a better harbinger of a renewed life in nature than its 
continued immobility would be. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



As my book is passing through the press, a friend calls my attention 
to some paragraphs in a recent english work, calculated, as he thinks, 
to prejudice Swedenborg's good name. The work is entitled Spiritual 
Wives, and has for its author Mr. Hepworth Dixon. It is a book con- 
ceived and written under such a palpably obscene inspiration that one 
must be thankful, I suppose, for the comparative pusillanimity which 
has presided over its execution. A thin gauze of decency is doubtless 
furnished by the language of the book, but its whole atmosphere is 
odiously foul, not because the facts with which it abounds necessarily 
suggest uncleanness, but because the author's scent is apparently so 
sensitive in that line that he snhTs corruption, where a blunter faculty 
would shrink from suspecting it. The auri sacra fames is tolerable 
only within certain well-defined limits, and it is a discredit to english 
literature, generally so manly, that a person of Mr. Dixon's fashion 
should have been allowed to thrust himself into provinces of thought 
and experience so essentially morbid as those here canvassed, and, 
therefore, so justly remote from a profane scrutiny and appreciation, 
without receiving an instant rebuke from the more respectable members 
of the literary guild. 

The facts which Mr. Dixon relates — if his information can be relied 
on, which seems a very doubtful point — are full of interest to philo- 
sophic thought, and do not of their own accord either invite or tolerate 
the coarse commentary and exposure they get at his hands. Mr. Dixon 
himself does not conceal that the victims to these delusions were emi- 
nently religious persons, filled with a fanatical or frenzied thirst of the 
divine approbation. Why then does he not show the same respect to 
the fantasies of their sincere faith, that he shows to the more common- 
place phenomena of the religious life ? Why, for example, does he 
cruelly revive the names and private histories of these suffering zealots, 
most of whom have passed to their final audit, and insidiously appeal to 
every denizen of the gutters to come and hold obscene carnival over 



240 



POSTSCRIPT. 



their graves ? I myself knew in my youth two young ladies, sisters, 
whose^name Mr. Dixon wantonly parades to a mocking and lascivious 
gaze ; and they were persons of such an exquisite feminine worth and 
loveliness in the estimation of all their friends, and in spite of their 
religious aberrations, that no violets of the wood, nor any lilies of the 
valley, ever owned a deeper heart of modesty, or exhaled a breath of 
chaster fragrance. What a horror then to encounter their stainless 
name in this depraved book ! 

If religion mean — as it is commonly held to mean— a strictly 
personal tie between God and man, then of course the tie is one ex- 
clusively of privilege; and I do not see accordingly how any consistent 
religionist is ever to stop short of fanaticism in his approaches to God. 
Of °course the vast mass of religious professors are insincere— i. e. as 
Christ said, are unconsciously acting a part imposed upon them by cir- 
cumstances— and obey only the logic of expediency; but I am not 
talking of these. I am talking only of the sincere religionist, of the 
man who feels himself so committed to the religious instinct in his soul, 
both for time and eternity, as to take no counsel of the flesh, that is, 
of his ecclesiastical connections, as to how far he shall obey it. If I am 
a person of this loyal make, and am actually able to feel a good con- 
science towards God, giving me an unquestionable advantage in his 
sight over a sinful world and a careless ungodly church, I do not see 
how I can help expecting, and hoping, and even craving that the divine 
love avouch its approbation of me in some signal or supernatural man- 
ner,— in giving me exemption, for example, from the ordinary limita- 
tions that impend over human freedom. I am, no doubt, an abject 
fanatic and fool to a spiritual or cultivated regard in cherishing such 
aspirations. But no one making a religious profession has the least 
right to call or to deem me one. For I am a fool, not because my con- 
duct is logically inconsistent with the intellectual principles we both avow, 
but because those principles themselves are flagrantly insane ; and 
here he and I are under the same condemnation. Such is the palpable 
and pitiless logic of the situation. What, then, is the remedy ? Surely 
not to trample me under the hoofs of your clownish envy and hypocritical 
commiseration, but patiently to show me that I fatally misconceive the 
aim of all true religious discipline, which is not to give me a sense of 
safe and pleasurable personal relations with God, but on the contrary 
so to inflame a sense of personal hostility to him in my bosom, that my 
otherwise implacable self-love may feel itself remorselessly slain in its 
inmost fastnesses, and I may thenceforth freely identify my private hopes 
towards him, with the promise of eventual and indiscriminate mercy he 
has made to my race or nature, and to that exclusively. 



POSTSCRIPT. 241 

But I only intended, when I began, briefly to stigmatize Mr. Dixon's 
absurd misrepresentations of Swedenborg's writings, which he strives 
by indirection to make more or less responsible for the disorders he 
paints. Of course it is worth while to say to a man who is ignorant of 
Swedenborg, that there is not one particle of truth, nor, perhaps, in any 
nice sense of the word, of veracity, in any of the insinuations Mr. Dixon 
lavishes on this subject. But it is not worth while to say so to anyone 
else. Every one familiar with Swedenborg knows that he who finds 
impurity, as to matter or form, either in Swedenborg's ideas of marriage, 
or of any interests relating to marriage, will, if he look a little deeper, 
probably come to the conclusion that his judgment was premature, that 
it reflects in fact far more truly upon himself or his own subjective 
states, than it does upon Swedenborg, and his objective teaching. It 
would be amusing to hear the derisive shouts with which the wandering 
Brook Farm ghosts must receive Mr. Dixon's discovery, that that 
movement was greatly due to Swedenborg's influence upon New Eng- 
land thought ! One is at a total loss, indeed — so habitual, so reckless, 
and so gross are Mr. Dixon's misstatements — to name the people upon 
whom he depended while here for information. But it is easy to divine 
that they must have been a sort of people unused to intellectual day- 
light, a sort of people towards whom the inquirer was bound to gravitate, 
and not " levitate," as the " spiritualist " lingo has it. For example, 
Mr. Dixon condescends, inter alia, upon my unworthy name in con- 
nection with the Brook-Farmers, a community with which, while it 
existed, I was in no relation whatever, either of knowledge or of sym- 
pathy. He manages, indeed, in the brief paragraph he devotes to me, 
to tell as many untruths, very nearly, as there are words in the para- 
graph. He first gives me the title of " reverend," and calls me a " Brook 
Farm enthusiast " ; the facts being that I never belonged to any ministry 
ordained or unordained, and that I almost never heard of the Brook 
Farm association till it failed to exist. He next says that I "scandal- 
ized society by making a public confession of my call to the New 
Jerusalem"; the fact being that I never heard such a call, nor even 
suspected the possibility of it, and never, therefore, scandalized society 
by confessing it in public or in private ; my idea of the New Jerusalem 
having always been that it is quite too divine a life in the earth to 
make its voice heard in the streets "calling " anybody, or even returning 
anybody's own " call." Mr. Dixon next proceeds tc say, that I filled 
many pages of the Harbinger with proofs of Swedenborg's and Fourier's 
doctrinal identity in respect to sexual morality; the fact being that 1 
never had a suspicion of any such identity, nor ever, therefore, alleged 
it. And then finally he says : " In fact, this reverend author, a man of 
16 



242 POSTSCRIPT. 

V 

very high gifts in scholarship and eloquence, declared himself, on 
spiritual grounds, in favor of a system of divorce which is hardly to be 
distinguished from divorce at will." The one grain of wheat in all this 
chaff is, that I have always declared, and do now declare, myself in 
favor of a systematized divorce ; but it is a monstrous stupidity to say 
that this divorce is nearly equivalent " to divorce at will." No doubt 
my idea might bear that interpretation to some persons, but only because 
these persons are profoundly 'sceptical as to marriage having any diviner 
sanction than social' convention, and hence suppose that to release 
married partners from the enforced homage they owe to each other — 
this enforced homage being the only thing that distinguishes our present 
marriage sacrament from concubinage — would be to destroy the mar- 
riage sentiment in their breasts and turn them into incontinent vaga- 
bonds. My hope in enlarging the grounds of divorce, on the contrary, 
is based exclusively upon my conception of marriage as furnishing the 
essential bond of the sexual relations, and as only awaiting, therefore, 
the disuse of force,. and the inauguration of perfect freedom in those 
relations, to prove itself also an indestructible bond. That a " learned 
pig " may turn up his nose at this logic, and refuse to commit his delicate 
interests to it, is quite conceivable, and is doubtless a salutary thing on 
the whole for the sty. But I have no idea of the sty as furnishing an 
architectural equivalent to our divinely human house, or home, which 
is still to come ; and I have no aspiration accordingly for its amendment. 
In fact the more uncomfortable and uninhabitable the sty becomes to 
human beings, the brighter the prospects of that "'holy and beautiful 
house." * That is to say, the more we are forced to suffer as mere porkers, 
revelling in the trough, the more we are likely to enjoy as men when 
once we shall have come to spiritual manhood. 

But enough of Mr. Dixon, who is certainly not worth referring to in 
his own right, but only as a sign of our growing moral decrepitude, 
which tolerates a literary man in betraying so cynical an irreverence 
for his own nature, as to make its most dolorous plague-spots an occasion 
of pecuniary gain, by using them as a vehicle, at best, of heartless 
rhetorical grimace, and a provocative of lascivious curiosity. The facts 
with which Mr. Dixon deals are facts of religious disease or disorder 
exclusively, demanding, therefore, above all things else, a sympathetic 
or reverential treatment. The sauce of indecency consequently with 
which he serves them up no way belongs to the facts themselves, 

* This is the lovely spiritual house typified in Deut. xxvii. 5, 6, and 1 Kings, vi. 7, 
" And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was 
brought thither: so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, 
heard in the house while it was in building." 



POSTSCEIPT. 243 

but is either a helpless secretion or a calculated oblation of his 
own prurient fancy, the lord alone knows which ; and no one else, 
I suppose, feels concerned even to inquire. What is palpable on the 
face of the book is that it is a mere pecuniary speculation; but what 
can one say of a man who, in the sight of such woes, has no other 
thought in his heart than how he can most make money out of 
them ! 



THE END. 



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